Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 727

The final section of this pamphlet is of special interest in a consideration of Steele's relations with Swift.

It purports to be a letter from Steele to a friend at court, who, in Miss Blanchard's opinion, could only be meant as Swift.

Steele first answers briefly the charges which his `` dear old Friend '' has made about his pamphlet on Dunkirk and his Crisis.

Then he launches into an attack on the Tory ministers, whom he calls the `` New Converts '' ; ;

by this term he means to ridicule their professions of acting in the interest of the Church despite their own education and manner of life -- a gibe, in other words, at the `` Presbyterianism '' in Harley's family and at Bolingbroke's reputed impiety.

The Tory leaders, he insinuates, are cynically using the Church as a political `` By-word '' to increase party friction and keep themselves in power.

This is the principal point made in this final section of Englishman No. 57, and it caps Steele's efforts in his other writing of these months to counteract the notion of the Tories as a `` Church Party '' supported by the body of the clergy.