What, then, is Swift's aim in the _Examiner_? Mr. Kinglake has told us how a great journal throve by discovering what was the remark that was on every one's lips, and making the remark its own. Swift had the more dignified task of really striking the keynote for his party. He was to put the ministerial theory into that form in which it might seem to be the inevitable utterance of strong common-sense. Harley's supporters were to see in Swift's phrases just what they would themselves have said--if they had been able. The shrewd, sturdy, narrow prejudices of the average Englishman were to be pressed into the service of the ministry, by showing how admirably they could be clothed in the ministerial formulas.
The real question, again, as Swift saw, was the question of peace. Whig and Tory, as he said afterwards,[23] were really obsolete words. The true point at issue was peace or war. The purpose, therefore, was to take up his ground so that peace might be represented as the natural policy of the church or Tory party; and war as the natural fruit of the selfish Whigs. It was necessary, at the same time, to show that this was not the utterance of high-flying Toryism or downright Jacobitism, but the plain dictate of a cool and impartial judgment. He was not to prove but to take for granted that the war had become intolerably burdensome; and to express the growing wish for peace in terms likely to conciliate the greatest number of supporters. He was to lay down the platform which could attract as many as possible, both of the zealous Tories and of the lukewarm Whigs.