There is no doubt he thought the formation of an Academy a matter of great importance. Why then did he deliberately introduce controversial elements and thus make impossible a discussion of his proposal wholly on its merits? I suggest as a possible answer that he wished the Whigs to dissociate themselves from the project and that he used the tactics expected to achieve this end, in the desire that entire credit for the founding of the Academy should rest with Harley and Harley's supporters. The partisan approach was therefore shrewdly calculated to provoke opposition and to avoid any leaven of Whiggism in the "institution and patronage" of the Academy. Swift wanted the contemporary prestige, as well as the favorable verdict of posterity, to be unmistakably placed. Nevertheless there was no intention of excluding meritorious Whigs from the original membership--only, as is clear from Swift's attitude, from the "institution and patronage" of the Academy. In a list of Academicians drawn up by Swift and Harley, unhappily not extant, members of both parties were included--so Swift wrote to Archbishop King in Dublin, and there is no reason to doubt it. Even Oldmixon grudgingly reports that Swift had promised "the Whigs that they shall come in if they will." However violent his partisanship at times, Swift could and did respect merit; and Harley was always ready to placate individual members of the Opposition. There is therefore no need to take seriously, as Oldmixon and the authors of _The British Academy_ pretend to do, the list of potential members of the Academy printed first in the _Amsterdam Gazette_ and quoted in _The British Academy_. It will be seen at a glance that they constitute that dinner group of Tory "Brothers," the Society to which Swift belonged, a group sufficient for its avowed purpose--"to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward deserving persons"--but of course he would not have accepted them _in toto_ for the Academy.
The Whig writers began their attack on the _Proposal_ immediately. In the _Medley_, founded by Mainwaring and Oldmixon "to provide an Antidote against the Poison of the Examiner," there is a brief reference in the issue of May 19-23, 1712, to "the very extraordinary Letter to a Great Man," followed in the next issue by an extended political attack with the _Proposal_ as the point of departure. Thus at the outset Swift's pamphlet was treated as a party document. At the same time the Whig writers were readying two pamphlets in answer, both announced in the _Medley_ of May 19-23 as soon to be printed. Apparently neither of these appeared, at least not under the announced titles; but by May 26 Oldmixon's _Reflections_ had been published anonymously and was referred to in the _Medley_ as "a very ingenious Pamphlet." As any reader of the _Reflections_ will observe for himself, the pamphlet opens on a violent political note and sustains it throughout. Although Oldmixon is more concerned to level charges against Swift--a lewd, irreverent cleric, a turncoat, a party scribbler, etc.--than to deny the validity of Swift's views concerning the language, he does directly challenge certain points. And he arrives at a conclusion which may well have been the result of honest conviction rather than mere party opposition: that it is neither desirable nor possible to fix the language forever. In a sense this was the chief issue, and the one where the authoritarian view as represented by Swift and others was most vulnerable. Is it possible, by the edicts of an academy however eminent its members and respected its authority, to negate or control the principle of change inherent in language? Unfortunately Oldmixon did not live long enough to see his attitude aggressively expounded by one of greater stature who also took issue with Swift, both in the _Preface to the Dictionary_ and in the life of Swift.