PRIOR. I agree with you entirely, Mr. _Dean_, and indeed if we cou'd cure our national Ailments by Writing and Speaking, as People who profess removing Disorders, by Words and Charms, what you and I and some others have Publish'd, might have done the Work: But alas! pressing Industry and Frugality on many of our People, who have been train'd up to Sloth and Squandering, is but of equal Efficacy with preaching up Temperance to Sots, or Cleanliness to Negroes, when their Habits and Vices are all against you. The Church of _Rome_ has plac'd _Purgatory_ in the North-West of _Ireland_, which was then one of the remotest wildest Parts of the Earth; and tho' I have reason to believe, they now Wish, they had removed it something more out of View, yet I am sure there is no Part of the Globe, so fit a _Purgatory_ for Sloth as _Ireland_, or where People so generally pay St. _Paul_'s Penalty for not Working, by not Eating. SWIFT. If due Care was taken, this natural Supineness of our lower People, might be soon turn'd into Activity and Vivacity, by letting them see and feel the Sweets of Labour, and convincing them by Fact and Experience, that when once the Poor are made industrious, they turn all they Touch to Gold, like _Midas_'s Fingers of famous Memory. As to our sleepy Countrymen, I cannot but say that it is a Pity, where Men are commanded to give one Day of the Week, to doing nothing but Acts of Piety, they don't regard the other Part of the Law, and labour the other Six. This at least shou'd be the Magistrate's, and the human Legislator's Business; but really there is no Law made, nor Care taken about it, but every Body overlooks this plain neglected Truth, that Men ought to be as accountable to the Magistrate, for their Time as their Actions, and as punishable for wasting it. But our _Irish_ seem actually to have mistaken the divine Commandment, and it is well their Priests did not leave it out of the Decalogue, as they did the Second. They manage, as if they thought God had bid them be idle six Days of the Week, and Work but one, and very moderately on that one. I have often met in Authors, and think the Assertion true, that the very Genius of the Popish Religion indisposes Men to Labour; as we see by their numerous Holidays, Feasts and Fasts: All which are direct Enemies to Toil and Handy-craft, and make the returns to Work disagreeable. It is undoubted that the Protestants out Trade and out Work the Papists; they have (as all observe) fewer Beggars, they have fewer Drains from their Industry, by those who sleep away their Lives in Colleges and Nunneries; they maintain a much smaller Number of secular Priests, and even to those, they do not prohibit Marriage, and to say no more at present, those lazy Drones the Friars of so many different Orders, are Cankers and Consumptions quite unknown to their Constitution. In most Protestant Countries, more than ordinary Attention, for good political Reasons, has been given to this great Point.