The present text is based on that given in the eighth volume of the quarto issue of Swift's Works published in 1765.
A LETTER TO THE WRITER OF
THE OCCASIONAL PAPER. or [200]
[VIDE THE CRAFTSMAN, 1727.]
Sir,
Although, in one of your papers, you declare an intention of turning them, during the dead season of the year, into accounts of domestic and foreign intelligence; yet I think we, your correspondents, should not understand your meaning so literally, as if you intended to reject inserting any other paper, which might probably be useful for the public. Neither, indeed, am I fully convinced that this new course you resolve to take will render you more secure than your former laudable practice, of inserting such speculations as were sent you by several well-wishers to the good of the kingdom; however grating such notices might be to some, who wanted neither power nor inclination to resent them at your cost. For, since there is a direct law against spreading false news, if you should venture to tell us in one of the Craftsmen that the Dey of Algiers had got the toothache, or the King of Bantam had taken a purge, and the facts should be contradicted in succeeding packets; I do not see what plea you could offer to avoid the utmost penalty of the law, because you are not supposed to be very gracious among those who are most able to hurt you.
Besides, as I take your intentions to be sincerely meant for the public service, so your original method of entertaining and instructing us will be more general and more useful in this season of the year, when people are retired to amusements more cool, more innocent, and much more reasonable than those they have left; when their passions are subsided or suspended; when they have no occasions of inflaming themselves, or each other; where they will have opportunities of hearing common sense, every day in the week, from their tenants or neighbouring farmers, and thereby be qualified, in hours of rain or leisure, to read and consider the advice or information you shall send them.
Another weighty reason why you should not alter your manner of writing, by dwindling to a newsmonger, is because there is no suspension of arms agreed on between you and your adversaries, who fight with a sort of weapons which have two wonderful qualities, that they are never to be worn out, and are best wielded by the weakest hands, and which the poverty of our language forceth me to call by the trite appellations of scurrility, slander, and Billingsgate. I am far from thinking that these gentlemen, or rather their employers, (for the operators themselves are too obscure to be guessed at) should be answered after their own way, although it were possible to drag them out of their obscurity; but I wish you would enquire what real use such a conduct is to the cause they have been so largely paid to defend. The author of the three first Occasional Letters, a person altogether unknown, hath been thought to glance (for what reasons he best knows) at some public proceedings, as if they were not agreeable to his private opinions. In answer to this, the pamphleteers retained on the other side are instructed by their superiors, to single out an adversary whose abilities they have most reason to apprehend, and to load himself, his family, and friends, with all the infamy that a perpetual conversation in Bridewell, Newgate, and the stews could furnish them; but, at the same time, so very unluckily, that the most distinguishing parts of their characters strike directly in the face of their benefactor, whose idea presenting itself along with his guineas perpetually to their imagination, occasioned this desperate blunder.
But, allowing this heap of slander to be truth, and applied to the proper person; what is to be the consequence? Are our public debts to be the sooner paid; the corruptions that author complains of to be the sooner cured; an honourable peace, or a glorious war the more likely to ensue; trade to flourish; the Ostend Company to be demolished; Gibraltar and Port Mahon left entire in our possession; the balance of Europe to be preserved; the malignity of parties to be for ever at an end; none but persons of merit, virtue, genius, and learning to be encouraged? I ask whether any of these effects will follow upon the publication of this author's libel, even supposing he could prove every syllable of it to be true?
At the same time, I am well assured, that the only reason of ascribing those papers to a particular person, is built upon the information of a certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself; a sort of persons who, although without much love, esteem, or dread of people in present power, yet have too much common prudence to speak their thoughts with freedom before such an intruder; who, therefore, imposes grossly upon his masters, if he makes them pay for anything but his own conjectures.