I hope, indeed, that our wise legislature will take this project into their serious consideration; and promote an endowment, which will be of such eminent service to multitudes of his Majesty's unprofitable subjects, and may in time be of use to _themselves_ and their posterity. * * * * * From my Garret in Moorfields, Aug. 20, 1733. TO THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS, &c. _The Humble Petition of the Footmen in and about the City of Dublin._ NOTE. Swift may have written the following mock petition by way of satire against the many absurd petitions which were presented at the time to the Irish House of Commons, and of which two examples were quoted in the note to a previous tract. If coal-porters and hackney-coachmen might address the Honourable House, why not footmen? * * * * * The present text is based on that found at the end of Swift's "Serious and Useful Scheme to make an Hospital for Incurables," issued by George Faulkner in 1733. Faulkner reprinted this volume in 1734. [T. S.] TO THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS, &c. _The Humble Petition of the Footmen in and about the City of Dublin._ _Humbly Sheweth_, That your Petitioners are a great and numerous society, endowed with several privileges, time out of mind. That certain lewd, idle, and disorderly persons, for several months past, as it is notoriously known, have been daily seen in the public walks of this City, habited sometimes in green coats, and sometimes in laced, with long oaken cudgels in their hands, and without swords, in hopes to procure favour, by that advantage, with a great number of ladies who frequent those walks, pretending and giving themselves out to be true genuine Irish footmen. Whereas they can be proved to be no better than common toupees,[182] as a judicious eye may soon discover by their awkward, clumsy, ungenteel gait and behaviour, by their unskilfulness in dress, even with the advantage of wearing our habits, by their ill-favoured countenances, with an air of impudence and dulness peculiar to the rest of their brethren; who have not yet arrived at that transcendent pitch of assurance. Although, it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these counterfeits shall happen to succeed in their evil design, of passing for real footmen, thereby to render themselves more amiable to the ladies. Your petitioners do further allege, that many of the said counterfeits, upon a strict examination, have been found in the very act of strutting, swearing, staring, swaggering, in a manner that plainly shewed their best endeavours to imitate us. Wherein, although they did not succeed, yet by their ignorant and ungainly way of copying our graces, the utmost indignity was endeavoured to be cast upon our whole profession.