To conclude: Whatever some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend, that in six months time after the act is passed for the extirpation of the Gospel, the Bank, and East-India Stock, may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it. ***** ***** ***** ***** FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION, AND THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS. BY A PERSON OF QUALITY. NOTE. In placing this tract second in chronological order I am following Forster and Craik. All the collected editions of Swift's works, including the "Miscellanies" of 1711, begin with "The Sentiments of a Church of England Man," continue with the "Argument," and then the "Project." But the short intervals which separated the publication of all three tracts and the "Letter on the Sacramental Test," make a strict chronological order of less value than the order of development of the subject-matter with which they deal, granting even that the "Project" appeared after "The Sentiments." There seems, however, nothing improbable in the suggestion made by Forster, that Swift planned the writing of both the "Argument" and the "Project" while on a visit to the Earl of Berkeley, at Cranford, in 1708; and his dedication of the latter to Lady Berkeley lends this suggestion added weight. That the original edition of the "Project" is dated 1709 is nothing to the point, since it is well-known that the booksellers often antedated their publications, as publishers do now, when the issue occurred towards the end of a year. Moreover, the letter of the Earl of Berkeley to Swift, which Scott misdates 1706-1707, but which should be 1708, makes special reference to this very tract, showing that it was certainly published in 1708. "I earnestly entreat you," writes the earl, "if you have not done it already, that you would not fail of having your bookseller enable the Archbishop of York [Dr. Sterne] to give a book to the queen; for, with Mr. Nelson, I am entirely of opinion, that Her Majesty's reading of that book on the Progress for the Increase of Morality and Piety, may be of very great use to that end." I have never seen a copy of the first edition of "The Sentiments," and I cannot fix the exact date of its publication; but it was certainly not written before the "Project." The "Project," therefore, must be considered in the light of a preliminary essay to the fuller and more digested statement of "The Sentiments of a Church of England man"; and I have, on this account, placed it as the second tract written by Swift in the year 1708.