The Works Author:Jonathan Swift Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE INTELLIGENCER, No. I. It may be said, without offence to other cities of much greater consequence to the world, that our town of Dublin does not want its ... more »due proportion of folly and vice, both native and imported; and as to those imported, we have the advantage to receive them last, and consequently, after our happy manner, to improve and refine upon them. But because there are many effects of folly and vice among us, whereof some are general, others confined to smaller numbers, and others again perhaps to a few individuals, there is a society lately established, who, at great expense, have erected an office of intelligence, from which they are to receive weekly information of all important events and singularities which this famous metropolis can furnish. Strict injunctions are given to have the truest information ; in order to which, certain qualified persons are employed to attend upon duty in their several posts; some at the play-house, others in churches; some at balls, assemblies, coffeehouses, and meetings for quadrille ; some at the several courts of justice, both spiritual and temporal; some at the college, some upon my lord mayor and aldermen in their public affairs ; lastly, some to converse with favourite chambermaids, and to frequent those alehouses and brandy-shops where the footmen of great families meet in a morning; only the barracks and parliament-house are excepted; because we have yet found no enfans perdus bold enough to venturetheir persons at either. Out of these and some other storehouses, we hope to gather materials enough to inform, or divert, or correct, or vex the town. These Numbers are extracted from a periodical paper, published at Dublin, by Sheridan, with the occasional assistance of his illustrious friend. But as facts, passages, ...« less