ton_, _Sand-wich_, and many others.

I am likewise apt to quarrel with some titles of lords among us, that
have a very ungracious sound, which are apt to communicate mean ideas to
those who have not the honour to be acquainted with their persons or
their virtues, of whom I have the misfortune to be one. But I cannot
pardon those gentlemen who have gotten titles since the judicature of
the peers among us has been taken away, to which they all submitted with
a resignation that became good Christians, as undoubtedly they are.
However, since that time, I look upon a graceful harmonious title to be
at least forty _per cent._ in the value intrinsic of an Irish peerage;
and, since it is as cheap as the worst, for any Irish law hitherto
enacted in England to the contrary, I would advise the next set, before
they pass their patents, to call a consultation of scholars and musical
gentlemen, to adjust this most important and essential circumstance. The
Scotch noblemen, though born almost under the north pole, have much more
tunable appellations, except some very few, which I suppose were given
them by the Irish along with their language, at the time when that
kingdom was conquered and planted from hence; and to this day retain the
denominations of places, and surnames of families, as all historians
agree.[194]

I should likewise not be sorry, if the names of some bishops' sees were
so much obliged to the alphabet, that upon pronouncing them we might
contract some veneration for the order and persons of those reverend
peers, which the gross ideas sometimes joined to their titles are very
unjustly apt to diminish.

SPEECH DELIVERED BY DEAN SWIFT

TO AN ASSEMBLY OF MERCHANTS MET AT THE GUILDHALL,

TO DRAW UP A PETITION TO THE LORD LIEUTENANT

ON THE LOWERING OF COIN,

APRIL 24TH, 1736.

NOTE.

Writing to Sheridan, under date April 24th, 1736, in a letter
written partly by herself and partly by Swift, Mrs. Whiteway,
Swift's housekeeper, refers to the occasion of this speech in the
following words:

"The Drapier went this day to the Tholsel[195] as a merchant, to
sign a petition to the government against lowering the gold, where
we hear he made a long speech, for which he will be reckoned a
Jacobite. God send hanging does not go round." (Scott's edition,
vol. xviii., p. 470. 1824.)

The occasion for this agitation against the lowering of the gold
a