We are in the condition of patients who have physic sent to them by doctors at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of their disease. In the _Drapier's Letters_ he denied the right of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. He declared that all reason was on the side of Ireland's being free, though power and the love of power made for Ireland's servitude. "The arguments on both sides," he said in a passage which sums up with perfect irony the centuries-old controversy between England and Ireland, were "invincible": For in reason all government without the consent of the governed is slavery. But, in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt. It would be interesting to know how the modern Tory, whose gospel is the gospel of the eleven men well armed, squares this with Swift's passionate championship of the "one single man in his shirt." One wishes very earnestly that the Toryism of Swift were in fact the Toryism of the modern Conservative party. Had it been so, there would have been no such thing as Carsonism in pre-war England; and, had there been no Carsonism, one may infer from Mr. Gerard's recent revelations, there might have been no European war. Mr. Whibley, it is only fair to say, is concerned with Swift as a man of letters and a friend, rather than with Swift as a party politician. The present book is a reprint of the Leslie Stephen lecture which he delivered at Cambridge a few months ago. It was bound, therefore, to be predominantly literary in interest. At the same time, Mr. Whibley's political bias appears both in what he says and in what he keeps silent about. His defence of Swift against the charge of misanthropy is a defence with which we find ourselves largely in agreement. But Mr. Whibley is too single-minded a party politician to be able to defend the Dean without clubbing a number of his own pet antipathies in the process. He seems to think that the only alternative to the attitude of Dean Swift towards humanity is the attitude of persons who, "feigning a bland and general love of abtract humanity ... wreak a wild revenge upon individuals." He apparently believes that it is impossible for one human being to wish well to the human race in general, and to be affectionate to John, Peter and Thomas in particular. Here are some of Mr. Whibley's rather wild comments on this topic. He writes: