Abbreviated title
The publick spirit of the Whigs
JSA Identification Number
Teerink/Scouten Number
ESTC Number
Copy and its Location
CUL, Syn.5.71.21(11)
Publisher and Printer
The publick spirit of the Whigs: set forth in their generous encouragement of the author of The crisis: with some observations on the seasonableness, candor, erudition, and style of that treatise, Vol. , pp .
London, Morphew, John, 1714.


As a response to Steele’s The Crisis, Swift’s pamphlet was also printed in quarto. The printing was, as usual, by John Barber and publication by John Morphew. It seems to have appeared on 23 February 1714. As with the Importance of The Guardian Consider e d, the printing is complex because it depends on Steele’s earlier subscription publication. Italics are used for citing Steele and for language that is not Swift’s own, and there are side notes giving page references. The printing is expressive of the work’s engagement in detailed controversial exchange.

Because of action in the House of Lords over a passage reflecting on Scottish peers, the edition was censored and sheets D and E replaced, but this is the uncensored original text. In Jonathan Swift Archive the censored texts are represented by ESTC T46112 and N39690.

John Barber (baptized 11 April 1675, died 2 January 1741) was the government printer while the Tories were in office: he printed the Votes of the House of Commons, The Examiner, and The Mercator and, in association with Benjamin Tooke, The London Gazette. He and Tooke were also Stationers to the Ordnance; together they were granted the reversion of Queen’s printer, but that was held by John Baskett and the assigns of Henry Hills and Thomas Newcomb until January 1740. Barber was also printer to the South Sea Company; Barber also had a successful career in London politics, becoming an alderman and serving as Lord Mayor in 1733-4. He had a large printing shop, employing two apprentices and seven journeymen, one of his compositors being John Wright, later the printer of Pope’s Dunciad Variorum and other of his later works. The output of Barber’s shop is generally very impressive in quality, and he showed considerable ingenuity in operating with reissues and cancels. Swift’s relations with Barber seem to have been good. They often dined together. Mrs Manley, who took over the writing of The Examiner from Swift, lived with Barber.


References: Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 446-76 (460-1); The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. viii, pp. 29-68, 201-4; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols. (London: Methuen, 1962-83), vol. ii, pp. 702-13; Charles A. Rivington, ‘Tyrant’: The Story of John Barber (York: William Sessions, 1989); Michael Treadwell, ‘Swift’s Relations with the London Book Trade to 1714’, in Author/Publisher Relations during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1983), pp. 1-36; Michael Treadwell, ‘London Trade Publishers, 1675-1750’, Library, 6th ser. 4 (1982), 99-134.