THE POCKET LIBRARY
OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Edited by GEORGE SAINTSBURY
A collection, in separate volumes, partly of extracts fromlong books, partly of short pieces, by the same writer, on thesame subject, or of the same class.
Vol I.—Tales of Mystery.
II.—Political Verse.
III.—Defoe's Minor Novels.
IV.—Political Pamphlets.
V.—Seventeenth Century Lyrics.
VI.—Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets.
POLITICAL PAMPHLETS
Edited By
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
LONDON
PERCIVAL AND CO.
1892
| CONTENTS | Page |
| I. LETTER TO A DISSENTER. (By George Savile, Marquess of Halifax) | 1 |
| II. THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS. (By Daniel Defoe) | 23 |
| III. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS. (By Jonathan Swift) To the Tradesmen, Shop-Keepers, Farmers, and Common-People in general, of the Kingdom of Ireland; concerning the Brass half-pence coined by Mr. Wood | 47 |
| A Letter to Mr. Harding the Printer, upon occasion of a Paragraph in his News-Paper of August 1, 1724, relating to Mr. Wood's Half-pence | 64 |
| IV. SECOND LETTER ON A REGICIDE PEACE. (By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke) | 81 |
| V. PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. (By Sydney Smith | 133 |
| VI. LETTER TO THE JOURNEYMEN AND LABOURERS OF ENGLAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. LETTER TO JACK HARROW. (By William Cobbett) | 182 |
| VII. FIRST LETTER OF MALACHI MALAGROWTHER. (By Sir Walter Scott) | 249 |
INTRODUCTION
It is sometimes thought, and very often said, that political writing,after its special day is done, becomes more dead than any other kindof literature, or even journalism. I do not know whether my ownjudgment is perverted by the fact of a special devotion to thebusiness, but it certainly seems to me that both the thought and thesaying are mistakes. Indeed, a rough-and-ready refutation of them issupplied by the fact that, in no few cases, political pieces haveentered into the generally admitted stock of the best literary things.If they are little read, can we honestly say that other things in thesame rank are read much more? And is there not the further plea, by nomeans contradictory, nor even merely alternative, that the bestexamples of them are, as a rule, merged in huge collected 'Works,' or,in the case of authors who have not attained to that dignity, simplyinaccessible to the general? At any rate my publishers hav