ss, or
dangerous principles of the painters, (although I have good reasons to
suspect the latter) those angels are usually drawn with such horrid
countenances, that they give great offence to every loyal eye, and equal
cause of triumph to the Jacobites being a most infamous reflection upon
our most able and excellent ministry.

I now return to that great enormity of our city cries; most of which we
have borrowed from London. I shall consider them only in a political
view, as they nearly affect the peace and safety of both kingdoms; and
having been originally contrived by wicked Machiavels, to bring in
Popery, slavery, and arbitrary power, by defeating the Protestant
Succession, and introducing the Pretender, ought, in justice, to be here
laid open to the world.

About two or three months after the happy Revolution, all persons who
possessed any employment, or office, in Church or State, were obliged by
an Act of Parliament, to take the oaths to King William and Queen Mary:
And a great number of disaffected persons, refusing to take the said
oaths, from a pretended scruple of conscience, but really from a spirit
of Popery and rebellion, they contrived a plot, to make the swearing to
those Princes odious in the eyes of the people. To this end, they hired
certain women of ill fame, but loud shrill voices, under pretence of
selling fish, to go through the streets, with sieves on their heads, and
cry, "Buy my soul, buy my soul;" plainly insinuating, that all those who
swore to King William, were just ready to sell their souls for an
employment. This cry was revived at the death of Queen Anne, and, I
hear, still continues in London, with great offence to all true
Protestants; but, to our great happiness, seems to be almost dropped in
Dublin.

But, because I altogether contemn the displeasure and resentment of
high-fliers, Tories, and Jacobites, whom I look upon to be worse even
than professed Papists, I do here declare, that those evils which I am
going to mention, were all brought in upon us in the _worst of times_,
under the late Earl of Oxford's administration, during the four last
years of Queen Anne's reign. _That wicked minister was universally known
to be a Papist in his heart. He was of a most avaricious nature, and is
said to have died worth four millions, sterl.[178] besides his vast
expenses in building, statues, gold plate, jewels, and other costly
rarities. He was of a mean obscure birth, from the very dregs o