deceived. In his reply to Swift he simply remarks: "You need not be
concerned: I will engage you will lose nothing by that paper." Swift,
however, lost more than the Archbishop thought; for "that paper" led to
his severance from the Whigs, and, in after life, to much contumely cast
on his character for being a political renegade. Because "he was not
Whig enough;" because he would not forsake his Church for his party,
critics and biographers have thought fit to make little of him, and to
compare him to his discredit with contemporaries whose intellects he
held in the palm of his hand, and to whom he might have stood as a moral
exemplar.

Swift refers to this tract in his "Memoirs relating to the change in the
Queen's Ministry," as follows:--"It was everybody's opinion, that the
Earl of Wharton would endeavour, when he went to Ireland, to take off
the test, as a step to have it taken off here: upon which I drew up and
printed a pamphlet, by way of a letter from a member of parliament here,
shewing the danger to the Church by such an intent. Although I took all
care to be private, yet the Lieutenant's chaplain, and some others
guessed me to be the author, and told his Excellency their suspicions;
whereupon I saw him no more until I went to Ireland."

The tract is one of the most favourable specimens of Swift's
controversial method and trenchant satire. The style is
excellent--forcible and pithy; while the arguments are like most of
Swift's arguments, aptly to the point with yet a potentiality of
application which fits them for the most general statement of the
principles under discussion. Scott considers the pamphlet "as having
materially contributed to the loss of the bill for repeal of the Test Act
during the Earl of Pembroke's vice-royalty." In the same year Swift
wrote "A Letter to a Member of Parliament in Ireland on choosing a new