The wisdom of Jonathan Swift would have been appropriate today, according to the recently retired Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Dr Maurice Stewart was delivering the annual Swift commemoration lecture yesterday.
"The sermon, `On Doing Good', belongs to 1724," Dr Stewart said, "but it would be just as appropriate set against the tax-evasion scandals of today. `The public are at the mercy of the wicked,' warned Swift, `since the wicked are always watching for opportunities to practise their avarice and malice'."
Swift saw mismanagement of the church's assets as rendering its spiritual mission impossible, and as Dean of St Patrick's he had "reorganised the cathedral finances". Doing good was the grandest gesture, Swift believed, and on his death he had left £11,000 for the founding of St Patrick's psychiatric hospital.
Since yesterday was World Mental Health Day, the hospital was a "fitting memorial to his [Swift's] great ideal of doing good".
