hem; and if once
our Legislature sets vigorously about proper Methods and Remedies for
all our Distresses, there is Hope that their Zeal may make Things take
a happier Turn, for this poor Kingdom.

SWIFT. I wish I may see such a blessed Change in our Affairs, but
Seasons and Aspects are a little unpromising; and what discourages me
the more is, another dreadful Quality of our People, that of their
being so ready to desert and forsake their Country, which they leave as
sillily as Birds quit their Nests, upon every little Fright or
Disturbance, or just to gratify a wandering Humour, and to chuse a
Situation they like better. Our Noblemen and Gentlemen leave us for
Pleasure and Amusement, and our Poor for Bread and Wages, which we
cannot or will not provide them at home; and some run off for mere
Safety, as they see our Distresses, and fly from us by the same sort of
Instinct that Rats forsake a falling House. Thus a Family where the
Master first deserts the Children, and then the Servants follow his
Example, can hardly be reduced to a worse Condition than we are, by
this epidemical Madness of wandering to _England_. Though the great
Gain she makes by their residing there, will never allow her to drive
them back to us, yet one wou'd expect the very Contempt and Neglect
they meet with there, wou'd make them return to a Country, where they
wou'd be so much honour'd, and where they well know they are so much
wanted. At the same Time I make no doubt, if the old Statutes, which
punish'd all Absentees with the Forfeiture of their Lands here, were to
be revived, and they were thereby obliged, to improve the Industry,
Arts and Manufactures of our People, _England_ wou'd in Time receive
great Advantages by the Change. Mean while they, and all the Earth, see
the Destruction they bring on us, by their deserting us in so
ungenerous a Manner; and tho' the Cause and the Cure are so evident, it
avails us no more, than the Knowledge of his Distemper does the poor
Wretch that lies a dying. If they stay'd with us, and help'd us, we
shou'd soon recover our natural Strength of Constitution, and become
both an industrious and an important People; whereas now, we are almost
a Cypher in the active and commercial World, and a mere Appendix to
another Nation; while, like ill-coupled Hounds, by drawing different
Ways, we sometimes rather disturb than help one another. If I had Hopes
to get a Law pass'd, to burn every Clergyman who does not reside,