It is the peculiar felicity and prudence of the people in this
kingdom, that whatever commodities or productions lie under the
greatest discouragements from England, those are what we are sure to be
most industrious in cultivating and spreading. Agriculture, which hath
been the principal care of all wise nations, and for the encouragement
whereof there are so many statute laws in England, we countenance so
well, that the landlords are everywhere by penal clauses absolutely
prohibiting their tenants from ploughing; not satisfied to confine them
within certain limitations, as it is the practice of the English; one
effect of which is already seen in the prodigious dearness of corn, and
the importation of it from London, as the cheaper market:[6] And
because people are the riches of a country, and that our neighbours
have done, and are doing all that in them lie, to make our wool a drug
to us, and a monopoly to them; therefore the politic gentlemen of
Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best land, for the feeding
of sheep.[7]
I could fill a volume as large as the history of the Wise Men of
Gotham with a catalogue only of some wonderful laws and customs we have
observed within thirty years past.[8] 'Tis true indeed, our beneficial
traffic of wool with France, hath been our only support for several
years past, furnishing us all the little money we have to pay our rents
and go to market. But our merchants assure me, “This trade hath
received a great damp by the present fluctuating condition of the coin
in France; and that most of their wine is paid for in specie, without
carrying thither any commodity from hence.”
However, since we are so universally bent upon enlarging our flocks,
it may be worth enquiring what we shall do with our wool, in case
Barnstaple[9] should be overstocked, and our French commerce should
fail?
I could wish the Parliament had thought fit to have suspended their
regulation of church matters, and enlargements of the prerogative till
a more convenient time, because they did not appear very pressing (at
least to the persons principally concerned) and instead of these great
refinements in politics and divinity, had amused themselves and their
committees a little with the state of the nation. For example: What if
the House of Commons had thought fit to make a resolution nemine
contradicente against wearing any cloth or stuff in their families,
which were not of the growth and manufacture of this kingdom? What if
they had extended it so far as utterly to exclude all silks, velvets,
calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies; and declared, that
whoever acted otherwise, should be deemed and reputed an enemy to the
nation?[10] What if they had sent up such a resolution to be agreed to
by the House of Lords, and by their own practice and encouragement
spread the execution of it in their several countries? What if we
should agree to make burying in woollen a fashion, as our neighbours
have made it a law? What if the ladies would be content with Irish
stuffs for the furniture of their houses, for gowns and petticoats to
themselves and their daughters? Upon the whole, and to crown all the
rest: Let a firm resolution be taken by male and female, never to
appear with one single shred that comes from England; “And let all the
people say, AMEN.”
I hope and believe nothing could please His Majesty better than to
hear that his loyal subjects of both sexes in this kingdom celebrated
his birthday (now approaching) universally clad in their own
manufacture. Is there virtue enough left in this deluded people to save
them from the brink of ruin? If the men's opinions may be taken, the
ladies will look as handsome in stuffs as brocades; and since all will
be equal, there may be room enough to employ their wit and fancy in
choosing and matching of patterns and colours. I heard the late
Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody's; “that
Ireland would never be happy till a law were made for burning
everything that came from England, except their people and their
coals.” Nor am I even yet for lessening the number of those
exceptions.[11]
Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum.
But I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.
If the unthinking shopkeepers in this town had not been utterly
destitute of common sense, they would have made some proposal to the
Parliament, with a petition to the purpose I have mentioned; promising
to improve the “cloths and stuffs of the nation into all possible
degrees of fineness and colours, and engaging not to play the knave
according to their custom, by exacting and imposing upon the nobility
and gentry either as to the prices or the goodness.” For I remember in
London upon a general mourning, the rascally mercers and
woollen-drapers, would in four-and-twenty hours raise their cloths and
silks to above a double price; and if the mourning continued long, then
come whining with petitions to the court, that they were ready to
starve, and their fineries lay upon their hands.
I could wish our shopkeepers would immediately think on this
proposal, addressing it to all persons of quality and others; but first
be sure to get somebody who can write sense, to put it into form.
I think it needless to exhort the clergy to follow this good
example, because in a little time, those among them who are so
unfortunate to have had their birth and education in this country, will
think themselves abundantly happy when they can afford Irish crape, and
an Athlone hat; and as to the others I shall not presume to direct
them. I have indeed seen the present Archbishop of Dublin clad from
head to foot in our own manufacture; and yet, under the rose be it
spoken, his Grace deserves as good a gown as any prelate in
Christendom.[12]
I have not courage enough to offer one syllable on this subject to
their honours of the army: Neither have I sufficiently considered the
great importance of scarlet and gold lace.
The fable in Ovid of Arachne and Pallas, is to this purpose. The
goddess had heard of one Arachne a young virgin, very famous for
spinning and weaving. They both met upon a trial of skill; and Pallas
finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and
envy, knocked her rival down, turned her into a spider, enjoining her
to spin and weave for ever, out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow
compass. I confess, that from a boy, I always pitied poor Arachne, and
could never heartily love the goddess on account of so cruel and unjust
a sentence; which however is fully executed upon us by England, with
further additions of rigour and severity. For the greatest part of our
bowels and vitals are extracted, without allowing us the liberty of
spinning and weaving them.
The Scripture tells us, that “oppression makes a wise man mad.”
Therefore, consequently speaking, the reason why some men are not mad,
is because they are not wise: However, it were to be wished that
oppression would in time teach a little wisdom to fools.
I was much delighted with a person who hath a great estate in this
kingdom, upon his complaints to me, “how grievously poor England
suffers by impositions from Ireland. That we convey our own wool to
France in spite of all the harpies at the custom-house. That Mr.
Shuttleworth, and others on the Cheshire coasts are such fools to sell
us their bark at a good price for tanning our own hides into leather;
with other enormities of the like weight and kind.” To which I will
venture to add some more: “That the mayoralty of this city is always
executed by an inhabitant, and often by a native, which might as well
be done by a deputy, with a moderate salary, whereby poor England lose
at least one thousand pounds a year upon the balance. That the
governing of this kingdom costs the lord lieutenant two thousand four
hundred pounds a year,[13] so much net loss to poor England.
That the people of Ireland presume to dig for coals in their own
grounds, and the farmers in the county of Wicklow send their turf to
the very market of Dublin, to the great discouragement of the coal
trade at Mostyn and Whitehaven. That the revenues of the post-office
here, so righteously belonging to the English treasury, as arising
chiefly from our own commerce with each other, should be remitted to
London, clogged with that grievous burthen of exchange, and the
pensions paid out of the Irish revenues to English favourites, should
lie under the same disadvantage, to the great loss of the grantees.
When a divine is sent over to a bishopric here, with the hopes of
five-and-twenty hundred pounds a year; upon his arrival, he finds,
alas! a dreadful discount of ten or twelve per cent. A judge or
a commissioner of the revenue has the same cause of
complaint.”—Lastly,
“The ballad upon Cotter is vehemently suspected to be Irish
manufacture; and yet is allowed to be sung in our open streets, under
the very nose of the government.”[14] These are a few among the many
hardships we put upon that poor kingdom of England; for which I
am confident every honest man wishes a remedy: And I hear there is a
project on foot for transporting our best wheaten straw by sea and land
carriage to Dunstable; and obliging us by a law to take off yearly so
many ton of straw hats for the use of our women, which will be a great
encouragement to the manufacture of that industrious town.
I should be glad to learn among the divines, whether a law to bind
men without their own consent, be obligatory in foro conscientiae
; because I find Scripture, Sanderson and Suarez are wholly silent in
the matter. The oracle of reason, the great law of nature, and general
opinion of civilians, wherever they treat of limited governments, are
indeed decisive enough.
It is wonderful to observe the bias among our people in favour of
things, persons, and wares of all kinds that come from England. The
printer tells his hawkers that he has got “an excellent new song just
brought from London.” I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself;
and upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself with great
volubility upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming
ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his
parts and accomplishments. 'Tis not many years, since I remember a
person who by his style and literature seems to have been corrector of
a hedge-press in some blind alley about Little Britain, proceed
gradually to be an author, at least a translator of a lower rate,
though somewhat of a larger bulk, than any that now flourishes in Grub
Street; and upon the strength of this foundation, come over here, erect
himself up into an orator and politician, and lead a kingdom after
him.[15] This, I am told, was the very motive that prevailed on the
author of a play, called “Love in a hollow Tree,” to do us the honour
of a visit; presuming with very good reason, that he was a writer of a
superior class.[16] I know another, who for thirty years past, hath
been the common standard of stupidity in England, where he was never
heard a minute in any assembly, or by any party with common Christian
treatment; yet upon his arrival hither, could put on a face of
importance and authority, talked more than six, without either
gracefulness, propriety, or meaning; and at the same time be admired
and followed as the pattern of eloquence and wisdom.
Nothing hath humbled me so much, or shewn a greater disposition to a
contemptuous treatment of Ireland in some chief governors,[17] than
that high style of several speeches from the throne, delivered, as
usual, after the royal assent, in some periods of the two last reigns.
Such high exaggerations of the prodigious condescensions in the prince,
to pass those good laws, would have but an odd sound at Westminster:
Neither do I apprehend how any good law can pass, wherein the king's
interest is not as much concerned as that of the people. I remember
after a speech on the like occasion, delivered by my Lord Wharton, (I
think it was his last) he desired Mr. Addison to ask my opinion of it:
My answer was, “That his Excellency had very honestly forfeited his
head on account of one paragraph; wherein he asserted by plain
consequence, a dispensing power in the Queen.” His Lordship owned it
was true, but swore the words were put into his mouth by direct orders
from Court. From whence it is clear, that some ministers in those
times, were apt, from their high elevation, to look down upon this
kingdom as if it had been one of their colonies of outcasts in America.
And I observed a little of the same turn of spirit in some great men,
from whom I expected better; although to do them justice, it proved no
point of difficulty to make them correct their idea, whereof the whole
nation quickly found the benefit?—But that is forgotten. How the style
hath since run, I am wholly a stranger, having never seen a speech
since the last of the Queen.
I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords, who by
unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom,
have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the
peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the
whole species of what we call substantial farmers, will in a very few
years be utterly at an end.[18] It was pleasant to observe these
gentlemen labouring with all their might for preventing the bishops
from letting their revenues at a moderate half value, (whereby the
whole order would in an age have been reduced to manifest beggary) at
the very instant when they were everywhere canting their own lands upon
short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre
advance.[19] I know not how it comes to pass, (and yet perhaps I know
well enough) that slaves have a natural disposition to be tyrants; and
that when my betters give me a kick, I am apt to revenge it with six
upon my footman; although perhaps he may be an honest and diligent
fellow. I have heard great divines affirm, that “nothing is so likely
to call down an universal judgment from Heaven upon a nation as
universal oppression;” and whether this be not already verified in
part, their worships the landlords are now at full leisure to consider.
Whoever travels this country, and observes the face of nature, or the
faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think
himself in a land where either law, religion, or common humanity is
professed.[20]
I cannot forbear saying one word upon a thing they call a bank,
which I hear is projecting in this town.[21] I never saw the proposals,
nor understand any one particular of their scheme: What I wish for at
present, is only a sufficient provision of hemp, and caps, and bells,
to distribute according to the several degrees of honesty and prudence
in some persons. I hear only of a monstrous sum already named; and if
others, do not soon hear of it too, and hear of it with a vengeance,
then am I a gentleman of less sagacity, than myself and very few
besides, take me to be. And the jest will be still the better, if it be
true, as judicious persons have assured me, that one half of this money
will be real, and the other half only Gasconnade.[22] The matter will
be likewise much mended, if the merchants continue to carry off our
gold, and our goldsmiths to melt down our heavy silver.
AN ESSAY
ON
ENGLISH BUBBLES.
BY THOMAS HOPE, ESQ.
NOTE.
The excitement and even fury which were prevalent in England
and
France during the years 1719 and 1720 over Law's South Sea
schemes
afforded Swift an opportunity for the play of his satire by
way of
criticism on projects which appeared to him to be of the same
character. News from France on the Mississippi Scheme which,
in
1719, was at the height of its stock-jobbing success, gave
glorious
accounts of fortunes made in a night, and of thousands who had
become rich and were living in unheard of luxury. Schemes were
floated on every possible kind of ventures, and so plentiful
was
the “paper money” that nothing was too absurd for speculators.
All
these schemes, which soon came to nought, went, later, by the
name
of “Bubbles,” and this essay of Swift's touches the matter
with his
usual satire.
The time chosen for the proposal for the establishment of a
National Bank in Ireland was not a happy one. It was made in
1720
when the “Bubbles” had burst and found thousands ruined and
pauperized. Swift, always an enemy to schemes of any kind,
classed
that of the bank with the rest of the “Bubbles,” and, although
the
plan itself was a real effort to relieve Ireland, and might
have
effected its purpose, the terror of the “Bubbles” was
sufficient to
wreck it.
It required very little from Swift to insure its rejection, and
rejected it was by the Irish legislature, before whose
consideration it was brought.
* * * * *
Some doubt seems to obtain as to the authenticity of this
“Essay on
English Bubbles,” which, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, may
“be
considered as introductory to the other” tracts on the Bank
Project. This essay, however, appears in the edition of 1720
of
“The Swearer's Bank,” and, although it is not included in the
“Miscellanies” of 1722, it is accepted by Faulkner in his
collected
edition of Swift's works. The present text is based on that
prefixed to the edition of “The Swearer's Bank,” 1720.
[T. S.]