A LETTER TO THE WRITER OF THE OCCASIONAL PAPER.
NOTE.
In April, 1727, Swift paid his last visit to England. The visit
paid by him to Walpole, already referred to, resulted in
nothing,
though it cannot, on that account, be argued that Swift's open
friendship for, and even support of, Pulteney and Bolingbroke
was
owing to his failure with Walpole. Swift pleaded with Walpole
for
Ireland and Ireland only, as his letter to Peterborough amply
testifies. It had nothing to do with the political situation
in
England. The explanation for this sympathy is most likely
found in
Sir Henry Craik's suggestion that Swift humoured the pretences
of
his friends that they were of the party that maintained the
national virtues, resisted corruption, and defended liberty
against
arbitrary power. To Pulteney Swift always wrote reminding him
that
the country looked to him as its saviour, and he wrote in a
similar
vein to Bolingbroke and Pope. The “Craftsman” had been founded
by
Pulteney and Bolingbroke (a curious companionship when one
remembers the past lives of these two men) for the express
purpose
of bringing low Walpole's political power. It began by
exposing the
tricks of “Robin” and continued to lay bare the cunning and
wiles
of the “Craftsman” at the head of the government of the
country.
Both Pulteney and Bolingbroke wrote regularly, and the former
displayed a journalistic power quite extraordinary.
The letter which follows was written by Swift when in London on
the
occasion of his last visit; but a note in Craik's “Life of
Swift"
(vol. ii., pp. 166-167) is very interesting as showing that
Swift
did certainly give hints for some of the subjects for
discussion. I
take the liberty to transcribe this note in full. Sir Henry
Craik
thinks it more than likely that Swift may have suggested,
during
his last visit to London, some of the lines on which
Bolingbroke
and Pulteney worked. In the note he adds:
“This finds some confirmation, from the following heads of a
Tract,
which I have found in a memorandum in Swift's handwriting. The
memorandum belongs to Mr. Frederick Locker [now dead], who
kindly
permitted me to use his papers, the same which came from
Theophilus
Swift into Scott's possession. But the interest of this
memorandum
escaped Scott's notice.”
“PROPOSAL FOR VIRTUE.”
“Every little fellow who has a vote now corrupted.
“An arithmetical computation, how much spent in election of
Commons, and pensions and foreign courts: how then can our
debts be
paid?
“No fear that gentlemen will not stand and serve without
Pensions,
and that they will let the Kingdom be invaded for want of
fleets
and armies, or bring in Pretender, etc.
“How K(ing) will ensure his own interest as well as the
Publick: he
is now forced to keep himself bare, etc., at least, late King
was.
“Perpetual expedients, stop-gaps, etc., at long run must
terminate
in something fatal, as it does in private estates.
“There may be probably 10,000 landed men in England fit for
Parliament. This would reduce Parliament to consist of real
landed
men, which is full as necessary for Senates as for Juries.
What do
the other 9,000 do for want of pensions?
“ ... In private life, virtue may be difficult, by passions,
infirmities, temptations, want of pence, strong opposition,
etc.
But not in public administration: there it makes all things
easy.
“Form the Scheme. Suppose a King of England would resolve to
give
no pension for party, etc., and call a Parliament, perfectly
free,
as he could.
“What can a K. reasonably ask that a Parliament will refuse?
When
they are resty, it is by corrupt ministers, who have designs
dangerous to the State, and must therefore support themselves
by
bribing, etc.
“Open, fair dealing the best.
“A contemptuous character of Court art. How different from true
politics. For, comparing the talents of two professions that
are
very different, I cannot but think, that in the present sense
of
the word Politician, a common sharper or pickpocket, has every
quality that can be required in the other, and accordingly I
have
personally known more than half a dozen in their hour esteemed
equally to excell in both.”
* * * * *
The present text is based on that given in the eighth volume of
the
quarto issue of Swift's Works published in 1765.
[T. S.]
A LETTER TO THE WRITER OF
THE OCCASIONAL PAPER.[200]
[VIDE THE CRAFTSMAN, 1727.]
SIR,
Although, in one of your papers, you declare an intention of turning
them, during the dead season of the year, into accounts of domestic and
foreign intelligence; yet I think we, your correspondents, should not
understand your meaning so literally, as if you intended to reject
inserting any other paper, which might probably be useful for the
public. Neither, indeed, am I fully convinced that this new course you
resolve to take will render you more secure than your former laudable
practice, of inserting such speculations as were sent you by several
well-wishers to the good of the kingdom; however grating such notices
might be to some, who wanted neither power nor inclination to resent
them at your cost. For, since there is a direct law against spreading
false news, if you should venture to tell us in one of the Craftsmen
that the Dey of Algiers had got the toothache, or the King of Bantam
had taken a purge, and the facts should be contradicted in succeeding
packets; I do not see what plea you could offer to avoid the utmost
penalty of the law, because you are not supposed to be very gracious
among those who are most able to hurt you.
Besides, as I take your intentions to be sincerely meant for the
public service, so your original method of entertaining and instructing
us will be more general and more useful in this season of the year,
when people are retired to amusements more cool, more innocent, and
much more reasonable than those they have left; when their passions are
subsided or suspended; when they have no occasions of inflaming
themselves, or each other; where they will have opportunities of
hearing common sense, every day in the week, from their tenants or
neighbouring farmers, and thereby be qualified, in hours of rain or
leisure, to read and consider the advice or information you shall send
them.
Another weighty reason why you should not alter your manner of
writing, by dwindling to a newsmonger, is because there is no
suspension of arms agreed on between you and your adversaries, who
fight with a sort of weapons which have two wonderful qualities, that
they are never to be worn out, and are best wielded by the weakest
hands, and which the poverty of our language forceth me to call by the
trite appellations of scurrility, slander, and Billingsgate. I am far
from thinking that these gentlemen, or rather their employers, (for the
operators themselves are too obscure to be guessed at) should be
answered after their own way, although it were possible to drag them
out of their obscurity; but I wish you would enquire what real use such
a conduct is to the cause they have been so largely paid to defend. The
author of the three first Occasional Letters, a person altogether
unknown, hath been thought to glance (for what reasons he best knows)
at some public proceedings, as if they were not agreeable to his
private opinions. In answer to this, the pamphleteers retained on the
other side are instructed by their superiors, to single out an
adversary whose abilities they have most reason to apprehend, and to
load himself, his family, and friends, with all the infamy that a
perpetual conversation in Bridewell, Newgate, and the stews could
furnish them; but, at the same time, so very unluckily, that the most
distinguishing parts of their characters strike directly in the face of
their benefactor, whose idea presenting itself along with his guineas
perpetually to their imagination, occasioned this desperate blunder.
But, allowing this heap of slander to be truth, and applied to the
proper person; what is to be the consequence? Are our public debts to
be the sooner paid; the corruptions that author complains of to be the
sooner cured; an honourable peace, or a glorious war the more likely to
ensue; trade to flourish; the Ostend Company to be demolished;
Gibraltar and Port Mahon left entire in our possession; the balance of
Europe to be preserved; the malignity of parties to be for ever at an
end; none but persons of merit, virtue, genius, and learning to be
encouraged? I ask whether any of these effects will follow upon the
publication of this author's libel, even supposing he could prove every
syllable of it to be true?
At the same time, I am well assured, that the only reason of
ascribing those papers to a particular person, is built upon the
information of a certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act
in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself; a
sort of persons who, although without much love, esteem, or dread of
people in present power, yet have too much common prudence to speak
their thoughts with freedom before such an intruder; who, therefore,
imposes grossly upon his masters, if he makes them pay for anything but
his own conjectures.
It is a grievous mistake in a great minister to neglect or despise,
much more to irritate men of genius and learning. I have heard one of
the wisest persons in my time observe, that an administration was to be
known and judged by the talents of those who appeared their advocates
in print. This I must never allow to be a general rule; yet I cannot
but think it prodigiously unfortunate, that, among the answerers,
defenders, repliers, and panegyrists, started up in defence of present
persons and proceedings, there hath not yet arisen one whose labours we
can read with patience, however we may applaud their loyalty and good
will. And all this with the advantages of constant ready pay, of
natural and acquired venom, and a grant of the whole fund of slander,
to range over and riot in as they please.[201]
On the other side, a turbulent writer of Occasional Letters, and
other vexatious papers, in conjunction perhaps with one or two friends
as bad as himself, is able to disconcert, tease, and sour us whenever
he thinks fit, merely by the strength of genius and truth; and after so
dexterous a manner, that, when we are vexed to the soul, and well know
the reasons why we are so, we are ashamed to own the first, and cannot
tell how to express the other. In a word, it seems to me that all the
writers are on one side, and all the railers on the other.
However, I do not pretend to assert, that it is impossible for an
ill minister to find men of wit who may be drawn, by a very valuable
consideration, to undertake his defence; but the misfortune is, that
the heads of such writers rebel against their hearts; their genius
forsakes them, when they would offer to prostitute it to the service of
injustice, corruption, party rage, and false representations of things
and persons.
And this is the best argument I can offer in defence of great men,
who have been of late so very unhappy in the choice of their
paper-champions; although I cannot much commend their good husbandry,
in those exorbitant payments of twenty and sixty guineas at a time for
a scurvy pamphlet; since the sort of work they require is what will all
come within the talents of any one who hath enjoyed the happiness of a
very bad education, hath kept the vilest company, is endowed with a
servile spirit, is master of an empty purse, and a heart full of
malice.
But, to speak the truth in soberness; it should seem a little hard,
since the old Whiggish principle hath been recalled of standing up for
the liberty of the press, to a degree that no man, for several years
past, durst venture out a thought which did not square to a point with
the maxims and practices that then prevailed: I say, it is a little
hard that the vilest mercenaries should be countenanced, preferred,
rewarded, for discharging their brutalities against men of honour, only
upon a bare conjecture.
If it should happen that these profligates have attacked an innocent
person, I ask what satisfaction can their hirers give in return? Not
all the wealth raked together by the most corrupt rapacious ministers,
in the longest course of unlimited power, would be sufficient to atone
for the hundredth part of such an injury.
In the common way of thinking, it is a situation sufficient in all
conscience to satisfy a reasonable ambition, for a private person to
command the forces, the laws, the revenues of a great kingdom, to
reward and advance his followers and flatterers as he pleases, and to
keep his enemies (real or imaginary) in the dust. In such an
exaltation, why should he be at the trouble to make use of fools to
sound his praises, (because I always thought the lion was hard set,
when he chose the ass for his trumpeter) or knaves to revenge his
quarrels, at the expense of innocent men's reputations?
With all those advantages, I cannot see why persons, in the height
of power, should be under the least concern on account of their
reputation, for which they have no manner of use; or to ruin that of
others, which may perhaps be the only possession their enemies have
left them. Supposing times of corruption, which I am very far from
doing, if a writer displays them in their proper colours, does he do
anything worse than sending customers to the shop? “Here only, at the
sign of the Brazen Head, are to be sold places and pensions: beware of
counterfeits, and take care of mistaking the door.”
For my own part, I think it very unnecessary to give the character
of a great minister in the fulness of his power, because it is a thing
that naturally does itself, and is obvious to the eyes of all mankind;
for his personal qualities are all derived into the most minute parts
of his administration. If this be just, prudent, regular, impartial,
intent upon the public good, prepared for present exigencies, and
provident of the future; such is the director himself in his private
capacity: If it be rapacious, insolent, partial, palliating long and
deep diseases of the public with empirical remedies, false, disguised,
impudent, malicious, revengeful; you shall infallibly find the private
life of the conductor to answer in every point; nay, what is more,
every twinge of the gout or gravel will be felt in their consequences
by the community. As the thief-catcher, upon viewing a house broke
open, could immediately distinguish, from the manner of the
workmanship, by what hand it was done.
It is hard to form a maxim against which an exception is not ready
to start up: So, in the present case, where the minister grows
enormously rich, the public is proportionably poor; as, in a private
family, the steward always thrives the fastest when his lord is running
out.
* * * * *
* * * * *
AN ACCOUNT OF THE COURT AND EMPIRE OF JAPAN.[202]
Regoge[203] was the thirty-fourth emperor of Japan, and began his
reign in the year 341 of the Christian era, succeeding to Nena,[204] a
princess who governed with great felicity.
There had been a revolution in that empire about twenty-six years
before, which made some breaches in the hereditary line; and Regoge,
successor to Nena, although of the royal family, was a distant
relation. There were two violent parties in the empire, which began in
the time of the revolution above mentioned; and, at the death of the
Empress Nena, were in the highest degree of animosity, each charging
the other with a design of introducing new gods, and changing the civil
constitution. The names of these two parties were Husiges and
Yortes.[205] The latter were those whom Nena, the late empress, most
favoured towards the end of her reign, and by whose advice she
governed.
The Husige faction, enraged at their loss of power, made private
applications to Regoge during the life of the empress; which prevailed
so far, that, upon her death, the new emperor wholly disgraced the
Yortes, and employed only the Husiges in all his affairs. The Japanese
author highly blames his Imperial Majesty's proceeding in this affair;
because, it was allowed on all hands, that he had then a happy
opportunity of reconciling parties for ever by a moderating scheme. But
he, on the contrary, began his reign by openly disgracing the principal
and most popular Yortes, some of which had been chiefly instrumental in
raising him to the throne. By this mistaken step he occasioned a
rebellion; which, although it were soon quelled by some very surprising
turns of fortune, yet the fear, whether real or pretended, of new
attempts, engaged him in such immense charges, that, instead of
clearing any part of that prodigious debt left on his kingdom by the
former war, which might have been done by any tolerable management, in
twelve years of the most profound peace; he left his empire loaden with
a vast addition to the old encumbrance.
This prince, before he succeeded to the empire of Japan, was king of
Tedsu,[206] a dominion seated on the continent, to the west side of
Japan. Tedsu was the place of his birth, and more beloved by him than
his new empire; for there he spent some months almost every year, and
thither was supposed to have conveyed great sums of money, saved out of
his Imperial revenues.
There were two maritime towns of great importance bordering upon
Tedsu:[207] Of these he purchased a litigated title; and, to support
it, was forced not only to entrench deeply on his Japanese revenues,
but to engage in alliances very dangerous to the Japanese empire.[208]
Japan was at that time a limited monarchy, which some authors are of
opinion was introduced there by a detachment from the numerous army of
Brennus, who ravaged a great part of Asia; and, those of them who fixed
in Japan, left behind them that kind of military institution, which the
northern people, in ensuing ages, carried through most parts of Europe;
the generals becoming kings, the great officers a senate of nobles,
with a representative from every centenary of private soldiers; and, in
the assent of the majority in these two bodies, confirmed by the
general, the legislature consisted.
I need not farther explain a matter so universally known; but return
to my subject.
The Husige faction, by a gross piece of negligence in the Yortes,
had so far insinuated themselves and their opinions into the favour of
Regoge before he came to the empire, that this prince firmly believed
them to be his only true friends, and the others his mortal
enemies.[209] By this opinion he governed all the actions of his reign.
The emperor died suddenly, in his journey to Tedsu; where, according
to his usual custom, he was going to pass the summer.
This prince, during his whole reign, continued an absolute stranger
to the language, the manners, the laws, and the religion of Japan; and
passing his whole time among old mistresses, or a few privadoes, left
the whole management of the empire in the hands of a minister, upon the
condition of being made easy in his personal revenues, and the
management of parties in the senate. His last minister,[210] who
governed in the most arbitrary manner for several years, he was thought
to hate more than he did any other person in Japan, except his only
son, the heir to the empire. The dislike he bore to the former was,
because the minister, under pretence that he could not govern the
senate without disposing of employments among them, would not suffer
his master to oblige one single person, but disposed of all to his own
relations and dependants. But, as to that continued and virulent hatred
he bore to the prince his son, from the beginning of his reign to his
death, the historian hath not accounted for it, further than by various
conjectures, which do not deserve to be related.
The minister above mentioned was of a family not contemptible, had
been early a senator, and from his youth a mortal enemy to the Yortes.
He had been formerly disgraced in the senate, for some frauds in the
management of a public trust.[211] He was perfectly skilled, by long
practice, in the senatorial forms; and dexterous in the purchasing of
votes, from those who could find their accounts better in complying
with his measures, than they could probably lose by any tax that might
be charged on the kingdom. He seemed to fail, in point of policy, by
not concealing his gettings, never scrupling openly to lay out vast
sums of money in paintings, buildings, and purchasing estates; when it
was known, that, upon his first coming into business, upon the death of
the Empress Nena, his fortune was but inconsiderable. He had the most
boldness, and the least magnanimity that ever any mortal was endowed
with. By enriching his relations, friends, and dependants, in a most
exorbitant manner, he was weak enough to imagine that he had provided a
support against an evil day. He had the best among all false
appearances of courage, which was a most unlimited assurance, whereby
he would swagger the boldest men into a dread of his power, but had not
the smallest portion of magnanimity, growing jealous, and disgracing
every man, who was known to bear the least civility to those he
disliked. He had some small smattering in books, but no manner of
politeness; nor, in his whole life, was ever known to advance any one
person, upon the score of wit, learning, or abilities for business. The
whole system of his ministry was corruption; and he never gave bribe or
pension, without frankly telling the receivers what he expected from
them, and threatening them to put an end to his bounty, if they failed
to comply in every circumstance.
A few months before the emperor's death, there was a design
concerted between some eminent persons of both parties, whom the
desperate state of the empire had united, to accuse the minister at the
first meeting of a new chosen senate, which was then to assemble
according to the laws of that empire. And it was believed, that the
vast expense he must be at in choosing an assembly proper for his
purpose, added to the low state of the treasury, the increasing number
of pensioners, the great discontent of the people, and the personal
hatred of the emperor; would, if well laid open in the senate, be of
weight enough to sink the minister, when it should appear to his very
pensioners and creatures that he could not supply them much longer.
While this scheme was in agitation, an account came of the emperor's
death, and the prince his son,[212] with universal joy, mounted the
throne of Japan.
The new emperor had always lived a private life, during the reign of
his father; who, in his annual absence, never trusted him more than
once with the reins of government, which he held so evenly that he
became too popular to be confided in any more. He was thought not
unfavourable to the Yortes, at least not altogether to approve the
virulence wherewith his father proceeded against them; and therefore,
immediately upon his succession, the principal persons of that
denomination came, in several bodies, to kiss the hem of his garment,
whom he received with great courtesy, and some of them with particular
marks of distinction.
The prince, during the reign of his father, having not been trusted
with any public charge, employed his leisure in learning the language,
the religion, the customs, and disposition of the Japanese; wherein he
received great information, among others, from Nomptoc[213], master of
his finances, and president of the senate, who secretly hated Lelop-Aw,
the minister; and likewise from Ramneh[214], a most eminent senator;
who, despairing to do any good with the father, had, with great
industry, skill, and decency, used his endeavour to instil good
principles into the young prince.
Upon the news of the former emperor's death, a grand council was
summoned of course, where little passed besides directing the ceremony
of proclaiming the successor. But, in some days after, the new emperor
having consulted with those persons in whom he could chiefly confide,
and maturely considered in his own mind the present state of his
affairs, as well as the disposition of his people, convoked another
assembly of his council; wherein, after some time spent in general
business, suitable to the present emergency, he directed Lelop-Aw to
give him, in as short terms as he conveniently could, an account of the
nation's debts, of his management in the senate, and his negotiations
with foreign courts: Which that minister having delivered, according to
his usual manner, with much assurance and little satisfaction, the
emperor desired to be fully satisfied in the following particulars.
Whether the vast expense of choosing such members into the senate,
as would be content to do the public business, were absolutely
necessary?
Whether those members, thus chosen in, would cross and impede the
necessary course of affairs, unless they were supplied with great sums
of money, and continued pensions?
Whether the same corruption and perverseness were to be expected
from the nobles?
Whether the empire of Japan were in so low a condition, that the
imperial envoys, at foreign courts, must be forced to purchase
alliances, or prevent a war, by immense bribes, given to the ministers
of all the neighbouring princes?
Why the debts of the empire were so prodigiously advanced, in a
peace of twelve years at home and abroad?
Whether the Yortes were universally enemies to the religion and laws
of the empire, and to the imperial family now reigning?
Whether those persons, whose revenues consist in lands, do not give
surer pledges of fidelity to the public, and are more interested in the
welfare of the empire, than others whose fortunes consist only in
money?
And because Lelop-Aw, for several years past, had engrossed the
whole administration, the emperor signified, that from him alone he
expected an answer.
This minister, who had sagacity enough to cultivate an interest in
the young prince's family, during the late emperor's life, received
early intelligence from one of his emissaries of what was intended at
the council, and had sufficient time to frame as plausible an answer as
his cause and conduct would allow. However, having desired a few
minutes to put his thoughts in order, he delivered them in the
following manner.
* * * * *
“SIR,
“Upon this short unexpected warning, to answer your Imperial
Majesty's queries I should be wholly at a loss, in your Majesty's
august presence, and that of this most noble assembly, if I were armed
with a weaker defence than my own loyalty and integrity, and the
prosperous success of my endeavours.
“It is well known that the death of the Empress Nena happened in a
most miraculous juncture; and that, if she had lived two months longer,
your illustrious family would have been deprived of your right, and we
should have seen an usurper upon your throne, who would have wholly
changed the constitution of this empire, both civil and sacred; and
although that empress died in a most opportune season, yet the
peaceable entrance of your Majesty's father was effected by a continual
series of miracles. The truth of this appears by that unnatural
rebellion which the Yortes raised, without the least provocation, in
the first year of the late emperor's reign, which may be sufficient to
convince your Majesty, that every soul of that denomination was, is,
and will be for ever, a favourer of the Pretender, a mortal enemy to
your illustrious family, and an introducer of new gods into the empire.
Upon this foundation was built the whole conduct of our affairs; and,
since a great majority of the kingdom was at that time reckoned to
favour the Yortes faction, who, in the regular course of elections,
must certainly be chosen members of the senate then to be convoked; it
was necessary, by the force of money, to influence elections in such a
manner, that your Majesty's father might have a sufficient number to
weigh down the scale on his side, and thereby carry on those measures
which could only secure him and his family in the possession of the
empire. To support this original plan I came into the service: But the
members of the senate, knowing themselves every day more necessary,
upon the choosing of a new senate, I found the charges to increase; and
that, after they were chosen, they insisted upon an increase of their
pensions; because they well knew that the work could not be carried on
without them: And I was more general in my donatives, because I thought
it was more for the honour of the crown, that every vote should pass
without a division; and that, when a debate was proposed, it should
immediately be quashed, by putting the question.
“Sir, The date of the present senate is expired, and your Imperial
Majesty is now to convoke a new one; which, I confess, will be somewhat
more expensive than the last, because the Yortes, from your favourable
reception, have begun to reassume a spirit whereof the country had some
intelligence; and we know the majority of the people, without proper
management, would be still in that fatal interest. However, I dare
undertake, with the charge only of four hundred thousand sprangs,[215]
to return as great a majority of senators of the true stamp, as your
Majesty can desire. As to the sums of money paid in foreign courts, I
hope, in some years, to ease the nation of them, when we and our
neighbours come to a good understanding. However, I will be bold to
say, they are cheaper than a war, where your Majesty is to be a
principal.
“The pensions, indeed, to senators and other persons, must needs
increase, from the restiveness of some, and scrupulous nature of
others; and the new members, who are unpractised, must have better
encouragement. However, I dare undertake to bring the eventual charge
within eight hundred thousand sprangs. But, to make this easy, there
shall be new funds raised, of which I have several schemes ready,
without taxing bread or flesh, which shall be referred to more pressing
occasions.
“Your Majesty knows it is the laudable custom of all Eastern
princes, to leave the whole management of affairs, both civil and
military, to their viziers. The appointments for your family, and
private purse, shall exceed those of your predecessors: You shall be at
no trouble, further than to appear sometimes in council, and leave the
rest to me: You shall hear no clamour or complaints: Your senate shall,
upon occasions, declare you the best of princes, the father of your
country, the arbiter of Asia, the defender of the oppressed, and the
delight of mankind.
“Sir, Hear not those who would most falsely, impiously, and
maliciously insinuate, that your government can be carried on without
that wholesome, necessary expedient, of sharing the public revenue with
your faithful deserving senators. This, I know, my enemies are pleased
to call bribery and corruption. Be it so: But I insist, that without
this bribery and corruption, the wheels of government will not turn, or
at least will be apt to take fire, like other wheels, unless they be
greased at proper times. If an angel from heaven should descend, to
govern this empire upon any other scheme than what our enemies call
corruption, he must return from whence he came, and leave the work
undone.
“Sir, It is well known we are a trading nation, and consequently
cannot thrive in a bargain where nothing is to be gained. The poor
electors, who run from their shops, or the plough, for the service of
their country, are they not to be considered for their labour and their
loyalty? The candidates, who, with the hazard of their persons, the
loss of their characters, and the ruin of their fortunes, are preferred
to the senate, in a country where they are strangers, before the very
lords of the soil; are they not to be rewarded for their zeal to your
Majesty's service, and qualified to live in your metropolis as becomes
the lustre of their stations?
“Sir, If I have given great numbers of the most profitable
employments among my own relations and nearest allies, it was not out
of any partiality, but because I know them best, and can best depend
upon them. I have been at the pains to mould and cultivate their
opinions. Abler heads might probably have been found, but they would
not be equally under my direction. A huntsman, who hath the absolute
command of his dogs, will hunt more effectually than with a better
pack, to whose manner and cry he is a stranger.
“Sir, Upon the whole, I will appeal to all those who best knew your
royal father, whether that blessed monarch had ever one anxious thought
for the public, or disappointment, or uneasiness, or want of money for
all his occasions, during the time of my administration? And, how happy
the people confessed themselves to be under such a king, I leave to
their own numerous addresses; which all politicians will allow to be
the most infallible proof how any nation stands affected to their
sovereign.”
* * * * *
Lelop-Aw, having ended his speech and struck his forehead thrice
against the table, as the custom is in Japan, sat down with great
complacency of mind, and much applause of his adherents, as might be
observed by their countenances and their whispers. But the Emperor's
behaviour was remarkable; for, during the whole harangue, he appeared
equally attentive and uneasy. After a short pause, His Majesty
commanded that some other counsellor should deliver his thoughts,
either to confirm or object against what had been spoken by Lelop-Aw.
THE ANSWER OF THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PULTENEY, ESQ., TO THE RIGHT
HON. SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.[216]
Oct. 15, 1730.
SIR,
A pamphlet was lately sent me, entitled, “A Letter from the Right
Honourable Sir R. W. to the Right Honourable W. P. Esq; occasioned by
the late Invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal
Family.” By these initial letters of our names, the world is to
understand that you and I must be meant. Although the letter seems to
require an answer, yet because it appears to be written rather in the
style and manner used by some of your pensioners, than your own, I
shall allow you the liberty to think the same of this answer, and leave
the public to determine which of the two actors can better personate
their principals. That frigid and fustian way of haranguing wherewith
your representer begins, continues, and ends his declamation, I shall
leave to the critics in eloquence and propriety to descant on; because
it adds nothing to the weight of your accusations, nor will my defence
be one grain the better by exposing its puerilities.
I shall therefore only remark upon this particular, that the frauds
and corruptions in most other arts and sciences, as law, physic (I
shall proceed no further) are usually much more plausibly defended than
in that of politics; whether it be, that by a kind of fatality the
vindication of a corrupt minister is always left to the management of
the meanest and most prostitute writers; or whether it be, that the
effects of a wicked or unskilful administration, are more public,
visible, pernicious and universal. Whereas the mistakes in other
sciences are often matters that affect only speculation; or at worst,
the bad consequences fall upon few and private persons. A nation is
quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by
knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours
conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their
penmen; while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair.
A Frenchman in his wooden shoes may, from the vanity of his nation, and
the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure
in boasting the grandeur of his monarch, in the midst of his own
slavery; but a free-born Englishman, with all his loyalty, can find
little satisfaction at a minister overgrown in wealth and power from
the lowest degree of want and contempt; when that power or wealth are
drawn from the bowels and blood of the nation, for which every
fellow-subject is a sufferer, except the great man himself, his family,
and his pensioners. I mean such a minister (if there hath ever been
such a one) whose whole management hath been a continued link of
ignorance, blunders, and mistakes in every article besides that of
enriching and aggrandizing himself.
For these reasons the faults of men, who are most trusted in public
business, are, of all others, the most difficult to be defended. A man
may be persuaded into a wrong opinion, wherein he hath small concern:
but no oratory can have the power over a sober man against the
conviction of his own senses: and therefore, as I take it, the money
thrown away on such advocates might be more prudently spared, and kept
in such a minister's own pocket, than lavished in hiring a corporation
of pamphleteers to defend his conduct, and prove a kingdom to be
flourishing in trade and wealth, which every particular subject (except
those few already excepted) can lawfully swear, and, by dear experience
knows, to be a falsehood.
Give me leave, noble sir, in the way of argument, to suppose this to
be your case; could you in good conscience, or moral justice, chide
your paper-advocates for their ill success in persuading the world
against manifest demonstration? Their miscarriage is owing, alas! to
want of matter. Should we allow them to be masters of wit, raillery, or
learning, yet the subject would not admit them to exercise their
talents; and, consequently, they can have no recourse but to impudence,
lying, and scurrility.
I must confess, that the author of your letter to me hath carried
this last qualification to a greater height than any of his fellows:
but he hath, in my opinion, failed a little in point of politeness from
the original which he affects to imitate. If I should say to a prime
minister, “Sir, you have sufficiently provided that Dunkirk should be
absolutely demolished and never repaired; you took the best advantages
of a long and general peace to discharge the immense debts of the
nation; you did wonders with the fleet; you made the Spaniards submit
to our quiet possession of Gibraltar and Portmahon; you never enriched
yourself and family at the expense of the public.”—Such is the style
of your supposed letter, which however, if I am well informed, by no
means comes up to the refinements of a fishwife in Billingsgate. “You
never had a bastard by Tom the waterman; you never stole a silver
tankard; you were never whipped at the cart's tail.”
In the title of your letter, it is said to be “occasioned by the
late invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal Family:"
and the whole contents of the paper (stripped from your eloquence) goes
on upon a supposition affectedly serious, that their Majesties, and the
whole Royal Family, have been lately bitterly and publicly inveighed
against in the most enormous and treasonable manner. Now, being a man,
as you well know, altogether out of business, I do sometimes lose an
hour in reading a few of those controversial papers upon politics,
which have succeeded for some years past to the polemical tracts
between Whig and Tory: and in this kind of reading (if it may deserve
to be so called) although I have been often but little edified, or
entertained, yet hath it given me occasion to make some observations.
First, I have observed, that however men may sincerely agree in all the
branches of the Low Church principle, in a tenderness for dissenters of
every kind, in a perfect abhorrence of Popery and the Pretender, and in
the most firm adherence to the Protestant succession in the royal house
of Hanover; yet plenty of matter may arise to kindle their animosities
against each other from the various infirmities, follies, and vices
inherent in mankind.
Secondly, I observed, that although the vulgar reproach which
charges the quarrels between ministers, and their opposers, to be only
a contention for power between those who are in, and those who would be
in if they could; yet as long as this proceeds no further than a
scuffle of ambition among a few persons, it is only a matter of course,
whereby the public is little affected. But when corruptions are plain,
open, and undisguised, both in their causes and effects, to the hazard
of a nation's ruin, and so declared by all the principal persons and
the bulk of the people, those only excepted who are gainers by those
corruptions: and when such ministers are forced to fly for shelter to
the throne, with a complaint of disaffection to majesty against all who
durst dislike their administration: such a general disposition in the
minds of men, cannot, I think, by any rules of reason, be called the
“clamour of a few disaffected incendiaries,” gasping[217] after power.
It is the true voice of the people; which must and will at last be
heard, or produce consequences that I dare not mention.
I have observed thirdly, that among all the offensive printed papers
which have come to my hand, whether good or bad, the writers have taken
particular pains to celebrate the virtues of our excellent King and
Queen, even where these were, strictly speaking, no part of the
subject: nor can it be properly objected that such a proceeding was
only a blind to cover their malice towards you and your assistants;
because to affront the King, Queen, or the Royal Family, as it would be
directly opposite to the principles that those kind of writers have
always professed, so it would destroy the very end they have in
pursuit. And it is somewhat remarkable, that those very writers against
you, and the regiment you command, are such as most distinguish
themselves upon all, or upon no occasions, by their panegyrics on their
prince; and, as all of them do this without favour or hire, so some of
them continue the same practice under the severest prosecution by you
and your janizaries.
You seem to know, or at least very strongly to conjecture, who those
persons are that give you so much weekly disquiet. Will you dare to
assert that any of these are Jacobites, endeavour to alienate the
hearts of the people, to defame the prince, and then dethrone him (for
these are your expressions) and that I am their patron, their bulwark,
their hope, and their refuge? Can you think I will descend to vindicate
myself against an aspersion so absurd? God be thanked, we have had many
a change of ministry without changing our prince: for if it had been
otherwise, perhaps revolutions might have been more frequent. Heaven
forbid that the welfare of a great kingdom, and of a brave people,
should be trusted with the thread of a single subject's life; for I
suppose it is not yet in your view to entail the ministryship in your
family. Thus I hope we may live to see different ministers and
different measures, without any danger to the succession in the royal
Protestant line of Hanover.
You are pleased to advance a topic, which I could never heartily
approve of in any party, although they have each in their turn advanced
it while they had the superiority. You tell us, “It is hard that while
every private man shall have the liberty to choose what servants he
pleaseth, the same privilege should be refused to a king.” This
assertion, crudely understood, can hardly be supported. If by servants
be only meant those who are purely menial, who provide for their
master's food and clothing, or for the convenience and splendour of his
family, the point is not worth debating. But the bad or good choice of
a chancellor, a secretary, an ambassador, a treasurer, and many other
officers, is of very high consequence to the whole kingdom; so is
likewise that amphibious race of courtiers between servants and
ministers; such as the steward, chamberlain, treasurer of the household
and the like, being all of the privy council, and some of the cabinet,
who according to their talents, their principles, and their degree of
favour, may be great instruments of good or evil, both to the subject
and the prince; so that the parallel is by no means adequate between a
prince's court and a private family. And yet if an insolent footman be
troublesome in the neighbourhood; if he breaks the people's windows,
insults their servants, breaks into other folk's houses to pilfer what
he can find, although he belong to a duke, and be a favourite in his
station, yet those who are injured may, without just offence, complain
to his lord, and for want of redress get a warrant to send him to the
stocks, to Bridewell, or to Newgate, according to the nature and degree
of his delinquencies. Thus the servants of the prince, whether menial
or otherwise, if they be of his council, are subject to the enquiries
and prosecutions of the great council of the nation, even as far as to
capital punishment; and so must ever be in our constitution, till a
minister can procure a majority even of that council to shelter him;
which I am sure you will allow to be a desperate crisis under any party
of the most plausible denomination.
The only instance you produce, or rather insinuate, to prove the
late invectives against the King, Queen, and Royal Family, is drawn
from that deduction of the English history, published in several papers
by the Craftsman; wherein are shewn the bad consequences to the
public, as well as to the prince, from the practices of evil ministers
in most reigns, and at several periods, when the throne was filled by
wise monarchs as well as by weak. This deduction, therefore, cannot
reasonably give the least offence to a British king, when he shall
observe that the greatest and ablest of his predecessors, by their own
candour, by a particular juncture of affairs, or by the general
infirmity of human nature, have sometimes put too much trust in
confident, insinuating, and avaricious ministers.
Wisdom, attended by virtue and a generous nature, is not unapt to be
imposed on. Thus Milton describes Uriel, “the sharpest-sighted spirit
in heaven,” and “regent of the sun,” deceived by the dissimulation and
flattery of the devil, for which the poet gives a philosophical reason,
but needless here to quote.[218] Is anything more common, or more
useful, than to caution wise men in high stations against putting too
much trust in undertaking servants, cringing flatterers, or designing
friends? Since the Asiatic custom of governing by prime ministers hath
prevailed in so many courts of Europe, how careful should every prince
be in the choice of the person on whom so great a trust is devolved,
whereon depend the safety and welfare of himself and all his subjects.
Queen Elizabeth, whose administration is frequently quoted as the best
pattern for English princes to follow, could not resist the artifices
of the Earl of Leicester, who, although universally allowed to be the
most ambitious, insolent, and corrupt person of his age, was yet her
greatest, and almost her only favourite: (his religion indeed being
partly puritan and partly infidel, might have better tallied with
present times) yet this wise queen would never suffer the openest
enemies of that overgrown lord to be sacrificed to his vengeance; nor
durst he charge them with a design of introducing Popery or the Spanish
pretender.
How many great families do we all know, whose masters have passed
for persons of good abilities, during the whole course of their lives,
and yet the greatest part of whose estates have sunk in the hands of
their stewards and receivers; their revenues paid them in scanty
portions, at large discount, and treble interest, though they did not
know it; while the tenants were daily racked, and at the same time
accused to their landlords of insolvency. Of this species are such
managers, who, like honest Peter Waters, pretend to clear an estate,
keep the owner penniless, and, after seven years, leave him five times
more in debt, while they sink half a plum into their own pockets.
Those who think themselves concerned, may give you thanks for that
gracious liberty you are pleased to allow them of “taking vengeance on
the ministers, and there shooting their envenomed arrows.” As to
myself; I neither owe you vengeance, nor make use of such weapons: but
it is your weakness, or ill fortune, or perhaps the fault of your
constitution, to convert wholesome remedies into poison; for you have
received better and more frequent instructions than any minister of
your age and country, if God had given you the grace to apply them.
I dare promise you the thanks of half the kingdom, if you will
please to perform the promise you have made of suffering the
Craftsman and company, or whatever other “infamous wretches and
execrable villains” you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own
sacred ministerial person, without bringing any of your brethren, much
less the most remote branch of the Royal Family, into the debate. This
generous offer I suspected from the first; because there were never
heard of so many, so unnecessary, and so severe prosecutions as you
have promoted during your ministry, in a kingdom where the liberty of
the press is so much pretended to be allowed. But in reading a page or
two, I found you thought it proper to explain away your grant; for
there you tell us, that “these miscreants” (meaning the writers against
you) “are to remember that the laws have ABUNDANTLY LESS generous, less
mild and merciful sentiments” than yourself, and into their secular
hands the poor authors must be delivered to fines, prisons, pillories,
whippings, and the gallows. Thus your promise of impunity, which began
somewhat jesuitically, concludes with the mercy of a Spanish
inquisitor.
If it should so happen that I am neither “abettor, patron,
protector,” nor “supporter” of these imaginary invectives “against the
King, her Majesty, or any of the Royal Family,” I desire to know what
satisfaction I am to get from you, or the creature you employed in
writing the libel which I am now answering? It will be no excuse to
say, that I differ from you in every particular of your political
reason and practise; because that will be to load the best, the
soundest, and most numerous part of the kingdom with the denominations
you are pleased to bestow upon me, that they are “Jacobites, wicked
miscreants, infamous wretches, execrable villains, and defamers of the
King, Queen, and all the Royal Family,” and “guilty of high treason.”
You cannot know my style; but I can easily know your works, which are
performed in the sight of the sun. Your good inclinations are visible;
but I begin to doubt the strength of your credit, even at court, that
you have not power to make his Majesty believe me the person which you
represent in your libel: as most infallibly you have often attempted,
and in vain, because I must otherwise have found it by the marks of his
royal displeasure. However, to be angry with you to whom I am indebted
for the greatest obligation I could possibly receive, would be the
highest ingratitude. It is to YOU I owe that reputation I have acquired
for some years past of being a lover of my country and its
constitution: to YOU I owe the libels and scurrilities conferred upon
me by the worst of men, and consequently some degree of esteem and
friendship from the best. From YOU I learned the skill of
distinguishing between a patriot and a plunderer of his country: and
from YOU I hope in time to acquire the knowledge of being a loyal,
faithful, and useful servant to the best of princes, King George the
Second; and therefore I can conclude, by your example, but with greater
truth, that I am not only with humble submission and respect, but with
infinite gratitude, Sir, your most obedient and most obliged servant,
W. P.
INDEX
Acheson, Sir Arthur, 246.
Alberoni's expedition, 207.
Allen, Joshua, Lord, his attack on Swift, 168, 169, 175, 176, 236,
237;
account of, 175.
America, emigration from Ireland to, 120.
Arachne, fable of, 21.
Ballaquer, Carteret's secretary, 242.
Bank, proposal for a national, in Ireland, 27, 31, 38, 42, 43;
subscribers to the, 49-51.
Barbou, Dr Nicholas, 69.
Barnstaple, the chief market for Irish wool, 18.
Beggars in Ireland, 70;
Proposal for giving Badges to, 323-335;
reason for the number of, 341.
Birch, Colonel John, 6.
Bishops, Swift's proposal to sell the lands of the, 252 et seq.
Bladon, Colonel, 23.
Bolingbroke, Lord, his contributions to the “Craftsman,” 219, 375,
377.
Boulter, Archbishop, his scheme for lowering the gold coinage,
353;
opposed by Swift, 353, 354.
Browne, Sir John, his “Scheme of the money matters of Ireland,”
66;
Swift's answer to his “Memorial,” 109-116.
Burnet, William, 121.
Carteret, John, Lord, 227;
Swift's Vindication of, 229-249.
Coinage, McCulla's proposal about, 179-190;
Swift's counter-proposal, 183.
Coining, forbidden in Ireland, 88, 134.
Compton, Sir Spencer, 387.
Corn, imported into Ireland from England, 17.
“Cossing,” explained, 271.
Cotter, ballad upon, 23.
“Craftsman,” the, 219, 375, 397, 399.
Davenport, Colonel, 280.
Delany, Dr. Patrick, 244.
Dublin, thieves and roughs in, 56;
Examination of certain Abuses, etc, in, 263-282;
Advice to the Freemen of, in the Choice of
a Member of Parliament, 311-316;
Considerations in the Choice of a Recorder of, 319, 320.
Dunkin, Rev. William, Swift's efforts in behalf of, 364, 368.
Dutton-Colt, Sir Harry, 280.
Elliston, Ebenezer, Last Speech of, 56 et seq.
Esquire, the title of, 49.
Footmen, Petition of the, 307.
French, Humphry, Lord Mayor of Dublin, 310, 311.
French army, recruited in Ireland, 218, 220.
Frogs, propagation of, in Ireland, 340.
Galway, Earl of, 235.
Grafton, Duke of, 194.
Grimston, Lord, his “Lawyer's Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree,”
24.
Gwythers, Dr., introduces frogs into Ireland, 340.
Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 387.
Hospital for Incurables, Scheme for a, 283-303.
Hutcheson, Hartley, 234.
Injured Lady, Story of the, 97-103;
Answer to the, 107-109.
Ireland, the Test Act in, 2, 5 et seq.;
exportation of wool from, forbidden, 17, 18, 110, 111, 157,
158;
absentee landlords, 25, 69, 71, 101, 162;
Sheridan's account of the state of, 26-30;
proposal for establishing a National Bank in, 31, 38, 42, 43;
maxims controlled in, 65;
poverty of, 25, 66, 87, 89, 90, 122;
increase of rents in, 67, 163;
begging and thieving in, 70;
Short view of the State of, 83-91;
importation of cattle into England prohibited, 86, 100, 110,
221;
encouragement of the linen manufactures in, 102, 158;
luxury and extravagance among the women in, 124, 139, 198, 199,
219;
condition of the roads in, 130;
bad management of the bogs in, 131;
dishonesty of tradesmen in, 142, 147;
the National Debt of, 196;
famine in, 203;
population of, 208;
persecution of Roman Catholics in, 263.
Irish brogue, the, 346.
Irish eloquence, 361.
Irish language, proposal to abolish the, 133.
Irish peers, titles of, 349.
Japan, Account of the Court and Empire of, 382-391.
King, Archbishop, 21, 119, 136, 244, 326.
Lindsay, Robert, 259.
Linen trade in Ireland, the, 88, 102, 158.
Littleton, Sir Thomas, 7.
Lorrain, Paul, ordinary of Newgate, 34.
Macarrell, John, 310, 311.
McCulla's Project about halfpence, 179-190.
Manufactures, Irish, Proposal for the Universal use of, 17-30;
Proposal that all Ladies should appear constantly in, 193-199.
See also “Woollen Manufactures.”
Mar, Earl of, 164.
Maxwell, Henry, his pamphlets in favour of a bank in Ireland, 38.
Mist, Nathaniel, 194.
National Debt, Proposal to pay off the, 251-258.
Navigation Act, the effect of, in Ireland, 66, 86.
Norton, Richard, 301.
“Orange, the squeezing of the,” 275.
Penn, William, 120.
Perron, Cardinal, anecdote of, 238.
Peterborough, Lord, letter of Swift to, April 28, 1726, 154-156.
Phipps, Sir Constantine, 244.
“Pistorides” (Richard Tighe), 233, 235.
Poor, Considerations about maintaining the, 339-342.
Poyning's Law, 103, 105.
Psalmanazar, George, his Description of the Island of Formosa,
211.
Pulteney, William, the “Craftsman” founded by, 219, 375;
“Answer of, to Robert Walpole,” 392-400.
Quilca, life at, 74, 75-77.
Rents, raising of, in Ireland, 163.
Roads, in Ireland, condition of the, 130.
Roman Catholics, legislation against, 5;
petty persecution of, in Ireland, 263.
Rowley, Hercules, his pamphlets against
the establishment of a bank in Ireland, 38.
Savoy, Duke of, 277.
Scotland, description of, 97, 98.
Scots in Sweden, 9.
Scottish colonists in Ulster, 104.
Sheridan, Dr. Thomas, 74;
his account of the state of Ireland, 26-30;
given a chaplaincy by Carteret, 232, 241;
anecdote of Carteret, related by, 232;
informed against by Tighe, 233, 242.
Stanley, Sir John, Commissioner of Customs, 197.
Stannard, Eaton, elected Recorder of Dublin, 319, 366.
Stopford, Dr. James, Bishop of Cloyne, 243.
Street cries explained, 268-270, 275-281.
Swan, Mr., 280.
Swandlingbar, origin of the name of, 347.
Swearer's Bank, the, 41.
Swift, Godwin, 347.
Swift, Jonathan, the freedom of the City of Dublin conferred on,
168;
his speech on the occasion, 169-172;
confesses the authorship of the “Drapier's Letters,” 171;
born in Dublin, 267;
his opposition to Archbishop Boulter, 353, 354;
his speech on the lowering of the coin, 357;
his efforts in behalf of Mr. Dunkin, 364-368;
receives the freedom of the City of Cork, 367;
appoints Dr. Wynne Sub-dean of St. Patrick's, 370.
Temple, Sir William, his comparison of Holland and Ireland, 164.
Test Act, in Ireland, 2, 5 et seq.
Thompson, Edward, Commissioner of the Revenue in Ireland, 315.
Tickell, T., 242.
Tighe, Richard, informs against Sheridan, 74, 233, 242;
attacks Carteret, 228;
ridiculed as “Pistorides,” 233, 235.
“Traulus” (Lord Allen), 176, 236.
Trees, planting of, in Ireland, 132.
Violante, Madam, 234.
Wallis, Dr., 280.
Walpole, Sir Robert, interview of Swift with, in 1726, 153;
his views on Ireland, 154;
satire on, 276;
his literary assistants, 379, 393 et seq.;
character of, 384 et seq.
Waters, Edward, Swift's printer, 171, 193.
Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice, 14, 86, 115, 129, 171, 193, 194.
Wine, proposed tax on, 196, 197.
Wool, Irish, exportation of,
forbidden by law, 17, 18, 110, 111, 157, 158;
effect of the prohibition on England, 160.
Woollen manufactures, Irish people should use their own, 137 et
seq.;
Observations on the case of the, 147-150.
Wynne, Rev. Dr. John, Sub-dean of St. Patrick's, 370.
~FOOTNOTES:~
[1] “Unpublished Letters of Swift,” edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill,
1899.
[2] Mr. Murray's MSS., quoted by Craik.
[3] It appeared almost impossible for Swift to see the injustice of
this test clause. In reality, it had been the outcome of the
legislation against the Irish Roman Catholics. In 1703 the Irish
parliament had passed a bill by which it was enacted, “that all estates
should be equally divided among the children of Roman Catholics,
notwithstanding any settlements to the contrary, unless the persons to
whom they were to descend, would qualify, by taking the oaths
prescribed by government, and conform to the established church"
(Crawford's “History of Ireland,” 1783, vol. ii., p. 256). The bill was
transmitted to England, for approval there, at a time when Anne was
asking the Emperor for his indulgence towards the Protestants of his
realms. This placed the Queen in an awkward position, since she could
hardly expect indulgence from a Roman Catholic monarch towards
Protestants when she, a Protestant monarch, was persecuting Roman
Catholics. To obviate this dilemma, the Queen's ministers added a
clause to the bill, “by which all persons in Ireland were rendered
incapable of any employment under the crown, or, of being magistrates
in any city, who, agreeably to the English test act, did not receive
the sacrament as prescribed by the Church of England” (ibid.).
Under this clause, of course, came all the Protestant Dissenters,
including the Presbyterians “from the north.” The bill so amended
passed into law; but its iniquitous influence was a disgrace to the
legislators of the day, and his advocacy of it, however much he was
convinced of its expediency, proves Swift a short-sighted statesman
wherever the enemies of the Church of England were concerned. [T. S.]
[4] Colonel John Birch (1616-1691) was of Lancashire. Swift calls
him “of Herefordshire,” because he had been appointed governor of the
city of Hereford, after he had captured it by a stratagem, in 1654.
Devotedly attached to Presbyterian principles, Birch was a man of
shrewd business abilities and remarkable oratorical gifts. On the
restoration of Charles II., in which he took a prominent part on
account of Charles's championship of Presbyterianism, Birch held
important business posts. He sat in parliament for Leominster and
Penrhyn, and his plans for the rebuilding of London after the Great
Fire, though they were not adopted, were yet such as would have been
extremely salutary had they been accepted. Of his eloquence, Burnet
says: “He was the roughest and boldest speaker in the house, and talked
in the language and phrases of a carrier, but with a beauty and
eloquence, that was always acceptable.” The reference to the carrier is
purposely made, since Birch did not hide the fact that he had once
pursued that occupation. Swift was twenty-four years of age when Birch
died, so that he must have been a very young man when he heard Birch
make the remark he quotes. [T. S.]
[5] Sir Thomas Littleton (1647?-1710) was chosen Speaker of the
English House of Commons by the junto in 1698. Onslow, in a note to
Burnet's “History,” speaks of the good work he did as treasurer of the
navy. Macky describes him as “a stern-looked man, with a brown
complexion, well shaped” (see “Characters"). At the time of Swift's
writing the above letter, Littleton was member for Portsmouth. [T. S.]
[6] Viscount Molesworth, in his “Considerations for promoting the
Agriculture of Ireland” (1723), pointed out, that even with the added
expense of freight, it was cheaper to import corn from England, than to
grow it in Ireland itself. [T. S.]
[7] Mr. Lecky points out that in England, after the Revolution, the
councils were directed by commercial influence. At that time there was
an important woollen industry in England which, it was feared, the
growing Irish woollen manufactures would injure. The English
manufacturers petitioned for their total destruction, and the House of
Lords, in response to the petition, represented to the King that “the
growing manufacture of cloth in Ireland, both by the cheapness of all
sorts of necessaries of life, and goodness of materials for making all
manner of cloth, doth invite your subjects of England, with their
families and servants, to leave their habitations to settle there, to
the increase of the woollen manufacture in Ireland, which makes your
loyal subjects in this kingdom very apprehensive that the further
growth of it may greatly prejudice the said manufacture here.” The
Commons went further, and suggested the advisability of discouraging
the industry by hindering the exportation of wool from Ireland to other
countries and limiting it to England alone. The Act of 10 and 11 Will.
III. c. 10, made the suggestion law and even prohibited entirely the
exportation of Irish wool anywhere. Thus, as Swift puts it, “the
politic gentlemen of Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best
land, for the feeding of sheep.” See notes to later tracts in this
volume on “Observations on the Woollen Manufactures” and “Letter on the
Weavers.” [T. S.]
[8] That Swift did not exaggerate may be gathered from the statute
books, and, more immediately, from Hely Hutchinson's “Commercial
Restraints of Ireland” (1779), Arthur Dobbs's “Trade and Improvement of
Ireland,” Lecky's “History of Ireland,” vols. i. and ii., and Monck
Mason's notes in his “History of St. Patrick's Cathedral,” p. 320 et
seq. [T. S.]
[9] Barnstaple was, at that time, the chief market in England for
Irish wool. [T. S.]
[10] In 1726, Swift presented some pieces of Irish manufactured silk
to the Princess of Wales and to Mrs. Howard. In sending the silk to
Mrs. Howard he wrote also a letter in which he remarked: “I beg you
will not tell any parliament man from whence you had that plaid;
otherwise, out of malice, they will make a law to cut off all our
weavers' fingers.” [T. S.]
[11] This last sentence is as the original edition has it. In
Faulkner's first collected edition and in the fifth volume of the
“Miscellanies” (London, 1735), the following occurs in its place: “I
must confess, that as to the former, I should not be sorry if they
would stay at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we
shall have no occasion for them.”
Swift knew what he was advising when he suggested that the people of
Ireland should not import their goods from England. He was well aware
that English manufactures were not really necessary. Sir William Petty
had, a half century before, pointed out that a third of the
manufactures then imported into Ireland could be produced by its own
factories, another third could as easily and as cheaply be obtained
from countries other than England, and “consequently, that it was
scarce necessary at all for Ireland to receive any goods of England,
and not convenient to receive above one-fourth part, from thence, of
the whole which it needeth to import” (“Polit. Anatomy of Ireland,”
1672). [T. S.]
[12] Faulkner and the “Miscellanies” (London, 1735) print, instead
of, “as any prelate in Christendom,” the words, “as if he had not been
born among us.” The Archbishop was Dr. William King, with whom Swift
had had much correspondence. See “Letters” in Scott's edition (1824).
Dr. William King, who succeeded Narcissus Marsh as Archbishop of
Dublin in March, 1702-3. Swift had not always been on friendly terms
with King, but, at this time, they were in sympathy as to the wrongs
and grievances of Ireland. King strongly supported the agitation
against Wood's halfpence, but later, when he attempted to interfere
with the affairs of the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Swift and he came to
an open rupture. See also volume on the Drapier's Letters, in this
edition. [T. S.]
[13] Faulkner and the “Miscellanies” of 1735 print this amount as
“three thousand six hundred.” This was the sum paid by the
lord-lieutenant to the lords-justices, who represented him in the
government of Ireland. The lord-lieutenant himself did not then, as the
viceroy of Ireland does now, take up his residence in the country.
Although in receipt of a large salary, he only came to Dublin to
deliver the speeches at the openings of parliament, or on some other
special occasion. [T. S.]
[14] The Dublin edition of this pamphlet has a note stating that
Cotter was a gentleman of Cork who was executed for committing a rape
on a Quaker. [T. S.]
[15] Said to be Colonel Bladon (1680-1746), who translated the
Commentaries of Cæsar. He was a dependant of the Duke of Marlborough,
to whom he dedicated this translation. [T. S.]
[16] Lord Grimston. William Luckyn, first Viscount Grimston
(1683-1756), was created an Irish peer with the title Baron Dunboyne in
1719. The full title of the play to which Swift refers, is “The
Lawyer's Fortune, or, Love in a Hollow Tree.” It was published in 1705.
Swift refers to Grimston in his verses “On Poetry, a Rhapsody.” Pope,
in one of his satires, calls him “booby lord.” Grimston withdrew his
play from circulation after the second edition, but it was reprinted in
Rotterdam in 1728 and in London in 1736. Dr. Johnson told Chesterfield
a story which made the Duchess of Marlborough responsible for this
London reprint, which had for frontispiece the picture of an ass
wearing a coronet. [T. S.]
[17] The original edition prints “ministers” instead of “chief
governors.” [T. S.]
[18] In 1720 Bishop Nicholson of Derry, writing to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, describes the wretched condition of the towns and the
country districts, and the misery of their population:
“Our trade of all kind is at a stand, insomuch as that our most
eminent merchants, who used to pay bills of 1,000l. at sight,
are hardly able to raise 100l. in so many days. Spindles of yarn
(our daily bread) are fallen from 2s. 6d. to 15d., and
everything also in proportion. Our best beef (as good as I ever ate in
England) is sold under 3/4d. a pound, and all this not from any
extraordinary plenty of commodities, but from a perfect dearth of
money. Never did I behold even in Picardy, Westphalia, or Scotland,
such dismal marks of hunger and want as appeared in the countenances of
most of the poor creatures I met with on the road.” (Brit. Mus. Add.
MSS. 6116, quoted by Lecky.) [T. S.]
[19] The “absentee” landlord was an evil to Ireland on which much
has been written. It was difficult to keep the country in order when
the landed proprietors took so little interest in their possessions as
to do nothing but exact rents from their tenants and spend the money so
obtained in England. Two, and even three, hundred years before Swift's
day “absenteeism” had been the cause of much of the rebellion in
Ireland which harassed the English monarchs, who endeavoured to put a
stop to the evil by confiscating the estates of such landlords. Acts
were passed by Richard II. and Henry VIII. to this effect; but in later
times, the statutes were ignored and not enforced, and the Irish
landlord, in endeavours to obtain for himself social recognition and
standing in England which, because of his Irish origin, were denied
him, remained in England indulging himself in lavish expenditure and
display. The consequences of this were the impoverishment of his
estates and their eventual management by rack-renters. These
rack-renters, whose only interest lay in squeezing money out of the
impoverished tenants, became the bane of the agricultural holder.
Unfortunately, the spirit of “absenteeism” extended itself to the
holders of offices in Ireland, and even the lord-lieutenant rarely took
up his residence in Dublin for any time longer than necessitated by the
immediate demands of his installation and speech-making, although he
drew his emoluments from the Irish revenues. In the “List of Absentees"
instances are given where men appointed to Irish offices would land on
Saturday night, receive the sacrament on Sunday, take the oath in court
on Monday morning, and be on their way back to England by Monday
afternoon.
It has been calculated that out of a total rental of £1,800,000, as
much as 33-1/3 per cent. was sent out of the country. [T. S.]
[20] Sheridan, in the sixth number of “The Intelligencer,”
contributes an account of the state of Ireland, written to the text, “O
patria! O divûm domus!”
“When I travel through any part of this unhappy kingdom, and I have
now by several excursions made from Dublin, gone through most counties
of it, it raises two passions in my breast of a different kind; an
indignation against those vile betrayers and insulters of it, who
insinuate themselves into favour, by saying, it is a rich nation; and a
sincere passion for the natives, who are sunk to the lowest degree of
misery and poverty, whose houses are dunghills, whose victuals are the
blood of their cattle, or the herbs in the field; and whose clothing,
to the dishonour of God and man, is nakedness. Yet notwithstanding all
the dismal appearances, it is the common phrase of our upstart race of
people, who have suddenly sprang up like the dragon's teeth among us,
That Ireland was never known to be so rich as it is now; by which,
as I apprehend, they can only mean themselves, for they have skipped
over the channel from the vantage ground of a dunghill upon no other
merit, either visible or divineable, than that of not having been born
among us.
“This is the modern way of planting Colonies—Et ubi solitudinem
faciunt, id Imperium vocant. When those who are so unfortunate to be
born here, are excluded from the meanest preferments, and deemed
incapable of being entertained even as common soldiers, whose poor
stipend is but four pence a day. No trade, no emoluments, no
encouragement for learning among the natives, who yet by a perverse
consequence are divided into factions, with as much violence and
rancour, as if they had the wealth of the Indies to contend for. It
puts me in mind of a fable which I read in a monkish author. He quotes
for it one of the Greek mythologists that once upon a time a colony of
large dogs (called the Molossi) transplanted themselves from Epirus to
Ætolia, where they seized those parts of the countries, most fertile in
flesh of all kinds, obliging the native dogs to retire from their best
kennels, to live under ditches and bushes, but to preserve good
neighbourhood and peace; and finding likewise, that the Ætolian dogs
might be of some use in the low offices of life, they passed a decree,
that the natives should be entitled to the short ribs, tops of back,
knuckle-bones, and guts of all the game, which they were obliged by
their masters to run down. This condition was accepted, and what was a
little singular, while the Molossian dogs kept a good understanding
among themselves, living in peace and luxury, these Ætolian curs were
perpetually snarling, growling, barking and tearing at each other's
throats: Nay, sometimes those of the best quality among them, were seen
to quarrel with as much rancour for a rotten gut, as if it had been a
fat haunch of venison. But what need we wonder at this in dogs, when
the same is every day practised among men?
“Last year I travelled from Dublin to Dundalk, through a country
esteemed the most fruitful part of the kingdom, and so nature intended
it. But no ornaments or improvements of such a scene were visible. No
habitation fit for gentlemen, no farmers' houses, few fields of corn,
and almost a bare face of nature, without new plantations of any kind,
only a few miserable cottages, at three or four miles' distance, and
one Church in the centre between this city and Drogheda. When I arrived
at this last town, the first mortifying sight was the ruins of several
churches, battered down by that usurper, Cromwell, whose fanatic zeal
made more desolation in a few days, than the piety of succeeding
prelates or the wealth of the town have, in more than sixty years,
attempted to repair.
“Perhaps the inhabitants, through a high strain of virtue, have, in
imitation of the Athenians, made a solemn resolution, never to rebuild
those sacred edifices, but rather leave them in ruins, as monuments, to
perpetuate the detestable memory of that hellish instrument of
rebellion, desolation, and murder. For the Athenians, when Mardonius
had ravaged a great part of Greece, took a formal oath at the Isthmus,
to lose their lives rather than their liberty, to stand by their
leaders to the last, to spare the cities of such barbarians as they
conquered. And what crowned all, the conclusion of their oath was, We
will never repair any of the Temples, which they have burned and
destroyed, lest they may appear to posterity as so many monuments of
these wicked barbarians. This was a glorious resolution; and I am sorry
to think, that the poverty of my countrymen will not let the world
suppose, they have acted upon such a generous principle; yet upon this
occasion I cannot but observe, that there is a fatality in some
nations, to be fond of those who have treated them with the least
humanity. Thus I have often heard the memory of Cromwell, who has
depopulated, and almost wholly destroyed this miserable country,
celebrated like that of a saint, and at the same time the sufferings of
the royal martyr turned into ridicule, and his murder justified even
from the pulpit, and all this done with an intent to gain favour, under
a monarchy; which is a new strain of politics that I shall not pretend
to account for.
“Examine all the eastern towns of Ireland, and you will trace this
horrid instrument of destruction, in defacing of Churches, and
particularly in destroying whatever was ornamental, either within or
without them. We see in the several towns a very few houses scattered
among the ruins of thousands, which he laid level with their streets;
great numbers of castles, the country seats of gentlemen then in being,
still standing in ruin, habitations for bats, daws, and owls, without
the least repairs or succession of other buildings. Nor have the
country churches, as far as my eye could reach, met with any better
treatment from him, nine in ten of them lying among their graves and
God only knows when they are to have a resurrection. When I passed from
Dundalk where this cursed usurper's handy work is yet visible, I cast
mine eyes around from the top of a mountain, from whence I had a wide
and a waste prospect of several venerable ruins. It struck me with a
melancholy, not unlike that expressed by Cicero in one of his letters
which being much upon the like prospect, and concluding with a very
necessary reflection on the uncertainty of things in this world, I
shall here insert a translation of what he says: 'In my return from
Asia, as I sailed from Ægina, towards Megara, I began to take a
prospect of the several countries round me. Behind me was Ægina; before
me Megara; on the right hand the Piræus; and on the left was Corinth;
which towns were formerly in a most flourishing condition; now they lie
prostrate and in ruin.
“'Thus I began to think with myself: Shall we who have but a
trifling existence, express any resentment, when one of us either dies
a natural death, or is slain, whose lives are necessarily of a short
duration, when at one view I beheld the carcases of so many great
cities?' What if he had seen the natives of those free republics,
reduced to all the miserable consequences of a conquered people, living
without the common defences against hunger and cold, rather appearing
like spectres than men? I am apt to think, that seeing his fellow
creatures in ruin like this, it would have put him past all patience
for philosophic reflection.
“As for my own part, I confess, that the sights and occurrences
which I had in this my last journey, so far transported me to a mixture
of rage and compassion, that I am not able to decide, which had the
greater influence upon my spirits; for this new cant, of a rich and
flourishing nation, was still uppermost in my thoughts; every mile I
travelled, giving me such ample demonstrations to the contrary. For
this reason, I have been at the pains to render a most exact and
faithful account of all the visible signs of riches, which I met with
in sixty miles' riding through the most public roads, and the best part
of the kingdom. First, as to trade, I met nine cars loaden with old
musty, shrivelled hides; one car-load of butter; four jockeys driving
eight horses, all out of case; one cow and calf driven by a man and his
wife; six tattered families flitting to be shipped off to the West
Indies; a colony of a hundred and fifty beggars, all repairing to
people our metropolis, and by encreasing the number of hands, to
encrease its wealth, upon the old maxim, that people are the riches of
a nation, and therefore ten thousand mouths, with hardly ten pair of
hands, or hardly any work to employ them, will infallibly make us a
rich and flourishing people. Secondly, Travellers enough, but seven in
ten wanting shirts and cravats; nine in ten going bare foot, and
carrying their brogues and stockings in their hands; one woman in
twenty having a pillion, the rest riding bare backed: Above two hundred
horsemen, with four pair of boots amongst them all; seventeen saddles
of leather (the rest being made of straw) and most of their garrons
only shod before. I went into one of the principal farmer's houses, out
of curiosity, and his whole furniture consisted of two blocks for
stools, a bench on each side the fire-place made of turf, six
trenchers, one bowl, a pot, six horn spoons, three noggins, three
blankets, one of which served the man and maid servant; the other the
master of the family, his wife and five children; a small churn, a
wooden candlestick, a broken stick for a pair of tongs. In the public
towns, one third of the inhabitants walking the streets bare foot;
windows half built up with stone, to save the expense of glass, the
broken panes up and down supplied by brown paper, few being able to
afford white; in some places they were stopped with straw or hay.
Another mark of our riches, are the signs at the several inns upon the
road, viz. In some, a staff stuck in the thatch, with a turf at the end
of it; a staff in a dunghill with a white rag wrapped about the head; a
pole, where they can afford it, with a besom at the top; an oatmeal
cake on a board at the window; and, at the principal inns of the road,
I have observed the signs taken down and laid against the wall near the
door, being taken from their post to prevent the shaking of the house
down by the wind. In short, I saw not one single house, in the best
town I travelled through, which had not manifest appearances of beggary
and want. I could give many more instances of our wealth, but I hope
these will suffice for the end I propose.
“It may be objected, what use it is of to display the poverty of the
nation, in the manner I have done. I answer, I desire to know for what
ends, and by what persons, this new opinion of our flourishing state
has of late been so industriously advanced: One thing is certain, that
the advancers have either already found their own account, or have been
heartily promised, or at least have been entertained with hopes, by
seeing such an opinion pleasing to those who have it in their power to
reward.
“It is no doubt a very generous principle in any person to rejoice
in the felicities of a nation, where themselves are strangers or
sojourners: But if it be found that the same persons on all other
occasions express a hatred and contempt of the nation and people in
general, and hold it for a maxim—'That the more such a country is
humbled, the more their own will rise'; it need be no longer a secret,
why such an opinion, and the advantages of it are encouraged. And
besides, if the bayliff reports to his master, that the ox is fat and
strong, when in reality it can hardly carry its own legs, is it not
natural to think, that command will be given, for a greater load to be
put upon it?” [T. S.]
[21] This was a project for the establishment of a national bank for
Ireland. Swift ridiculed the proposal (see p. 31), no doubt, out of
suspicion of the acts of stock-jobbers and the monied interests which
were enlisted on the side of the Whigs. His experience, also, of the
abortive South Sea Schemes would tend to make his opposition all the
stronger. But the plans for the bank were not ill-conceived, and had
Swift been in calmer temper he might have seen the advantages which
attached to the proposals. [T. S.]
[22] Thus in original edition. In Faulkner and the “Miscellanies” of
1735 the words are, “altogether imaginary.” [T. S.]
[23] The motto round a crown piece, which was the usual price of
permits. [Orig. edit.]
[24] The Dean of St. Patrick's. [F.]
[25] Paul Lorrain, who was appointed ordinary of Newgate in 1698,
compiled numerous confessions and dying speeches of prisoners condemned
to be hanged. A letter to Swift, from Pope and Bolingbroke, dated
December, 1725, mentions him as “the great historiographer,” and
Steele, in the “Tatler” and “Spectator,” refers to “Lorrain's Saints.”
Lorrain attended some famous criminals to the scaffold, including
Captain Kidd and Jack Sheppard. [T. S.]
[26] The following is an account of the proceedings of both the
houses of the Irish parliament upon the subject of this proposed bank.
In the year 1720, James, Earl of Abercorn, Gustavus, Viscount Boyne,
Sir Ralph Gore, Bart., Oliver St. George, and Michael Ward, Esqs., in
behalf of themselves and others, presented a petition to his Majesty
for a charter of incorporation, whereby they might be established as a
bank, under the name and title of the Bank of Ireland. They proposed to
raise a fund of £500,000 to supply merchants, etc., with money at five
per cent., and agreed to contribute £50,000 to the service of
government in consideration of their obtaining a charter. In their
petition they state, that “the raising of a million for that purpose is
creating a greater fund than the nation can employ.” Soon after the
above-mentioned petition was lodged, a second application was made by
Lord Forbes and others, who proposed raising a million for that
purpose, and offered to discharge “the £50,000 national debt of that
kingdom, in five years from the time they should obtain a charter.” The
latter application, being subsequent in point of date, was withdrawn,
Lord Forbes and his friends having acquainted the Lord-lieutenant that,
“rather than, by a competition, obstruct a proposal of so general
advantage, they were willing to desist from their application.” The
former was accordingly approved of, and the King, on the 29th of July,
1721, issued letters of Privy Seal, directing that a charter of
incorporation should pass the Great Seal of Ireland. (“Comm. Journ.,”
vol. iii, Appendix ix, page cc, etc.)
When the parliament of Ireland met, on the 12th of September
following, the Duke of Grafton, lord lieutenant, in his speech from the
throne, communicated the intention of his Majesty to both houses, and
concluded by saying, “As this is a matter of general and national
concern, his Majesty leaves it to the wisdom of Parliament to consider
what advantages the public may receive by erecting a bank, and in what
manner it may be settled upon a safe foundation, so as to be beneficial
to the kingdom.” The commons, in their address, which was voted
unanimously on the 14th, expressed their gratitude for his Majesty's
goodness and royal favour in directing a commission to establish a
bank, and on the 21st moved for the papers to be laid before them; they
even, on the 29th, agreed to the following resolution of the committee
they had appointed, “that the establishment of a bank upon a solid and
good foundation, under proper regulations and restrictions, will
contribute to restoring of credit, and support of the trade and
manufacture of the kingdom;” but, when the heads of a bill for
establishing the bank came to be discussed, a strenuous opposition was
raised to it. On the 9th of December Sir Thomas Taylor, chairman of the
committee to whom the matter had been referred, reported “that they had
gone through the first enacting paragraph, and disagreed to the same.”
Accordingly, the question being proposed and put, the house (after a
division, wherein there appeared 150 for the question and 80 against
it) voted that “they could not find any safe foundation for
establishing a public bank,” and resolved that an address, conformable
to this resolution, should be presented to the lord-lieutenant. (Comm.
Journ., vol. iii, pp. 247-289.)
The proceedings of the House of Lords resembled that of the Commons;
on the 8th of November they concurred with the resolution of their
committee, which was unfavourable to the establishment of a bank. A
protest was, however, entered, signed by four temporal and two
spiritual peers, and when an address to his Majesty, grounded on that
resolution, was proposed, a long debate ensued, which occupied two
days. On the 9th December a list of the subscriptions was called for,
and on the 16th they resolved, that if any lord, spiritual or temporal,
should attempt to obtain a charter to erect a bank, “he should be
deemed a contemnor of the authority of that house, and a betrayer of
the liberty of his country.” They ordered, likewise, that this
resolution should be presented by the chancellor to the lord
lieutenant. (“Lord's Journal,” vol. ii, pp. 687-720.) Monck Mason's
“Hist. St. Patrick's Cathedral,” p. 325, note 3. [T. S.]
[27] The title, Esquire, according to a high authority, was
anciently applied “to the younger sons of nobility and their heirs in
the immediate line, to the eldest sons of knights and their heirs, to
the esquire of the knights and others of that rank in his Majesty's
service, and to such as had eminent employment in the Commonwealth, and
were not knighted, such as judges, sheriffs, and justices of the peace
during their offices, and some others. But now,” says Sir Edward
Walker, “in the days of Charles I., the addition is so increased, that
he is a very poor and inconsiderable person who writes himself less.”
Accordingly, most of the signatures for shares in the projected
National Bank of Ireland, were dignified with the addition of Esquire,
which, added to the obscurity of the subscribers, incurs the ridicule
of our author in the following treatise. [S.]
[28] SUBSCRIBERS TO THE BANK, PLACED ACCORDING TO THEIR ORDER AND
QUALITY, WITH NOTES AND QUERIES.
A true and exact account of the nobility, gentry, and traders, of
the kingdom of Ireland, who, upon mature deliberation, are of opinion,
that the establishing a bank upon real security, would be highly for
the advantage of the trade of the said kingdom, and for increasing the
current species of money in the same. Extracted from the list of the
subscribers to the Bank of Ireland, published by order of the
commissioners appointed to receive subscriptions.
Nobility.
Archbishops 0
Marquisses 0
Earls 0
Viscounts 3
Barons 1
Bishops 2
French Baron 1
N. B.: The temporal Lords of Ireland are 125, the Bishops 22. In all
147, exclusive of the aforesaid French Count.
Gentry.
Baronets 1
Knights 1
N. B. Total of baronets and knights in Ireland uncertain; but in
common computation supposed to be more than two.
Members of the House of Commons—41. One whereof reckoned before
amongst the two knights.
N. B. Number of Commoners in all 300.
Esquires not Members of Parliament—37
N. B. There are at least 20 of the said 37 Esquires whose names are
little known, and whose qualifications as Esqrs. are referred to the
king at arms; and the said king is desired to send to the publisher
hereof a true account of the whole number of such real or reputed
Esqrs. as are to be found in this kingdom.
Clergy.
Deans 1
Arch-Deacons 2
Rectors 3
Curates 2
N. B. Of this number one French dean, one French curate, and one
bookseller.
Officers not members of Parliament—16
N. B. Of the above number 10 French; but uncertain whether on whole
or half pay, broken, or of the militia.
Women.
Ladies 1
Widows 3 whereof one qualified to be deputy-governor.
Maidens 4
N. B. It being uncertain in what class to place the eight female
subscribers, whether in that of nobility, gentry, &c. it is thought
proper to insert them here betwixt the officers and traders.
Traders.
{ Dublin 1 a Frenchman.
Aldermen of { Cork 1
{ Limerick 1
Waterford 0
Drogheda 0
&c. 0
Merchants 29, viz. 10 French, of London 1, of Cork 1, of
Belfast 1.
N. B. The place of abode of three of the said merchants, viz.
of London, Cork and Belfast, being mentioned, the publisher desires to
know where the rest may be wrote to, and whether they deal in wholesale
or retail, viz.
Master dealers, &c. 59, cashiers 1, bankers 4, chemist 1, player 1,
Popish vintner 1, bricklayer 1, chandler 1, doctors of physic 4,
chirurgeons 2, pewterer 1, attorneys 4 (besides one esq. attorney
before reckoned), Frenchmen 8, but whether pensioners, barbers, or
markees, uncertain. As to the rest of the M——rs, the publisher of
this paper, though he has used his utmost diligence, has not been able
to get a satisfactory account either as to their country, trade or
profession.
N. B. The total of men, women and children in Ireland, besides
Frenchmen, is 2,000,000. Total of the land of Ireland acres 16,800,000.
(Vide Reasons for a Bank, &c.)
Quære, How many of the said acres are in possession of 1 French
baron, 1 French dean, 1 French curate, 1 French alderman, 10 French
merchants, 8 Messieurs Frances, 1 esq. projector, 1 esq. attorney, 6
officers of the army, 8 women, 1 London merchant, 1 Cork merchant, 1
Belfast merchant, 18 merchants whose places of abode are not mentioned,
1 cashier, 4 bankers, 1 gentleman projector, 1 player, 1 chemist, 1
Popish vintner, 1 bricklayer, 1 chandler, 4 doctors of physic, 2
chirurgeons, 1 pewterer, 4 gentlemen attorneys, besides 28 gentleman
dealers, yet unknown, ut supra?
Dublin: Printed by John Harding in Molesworth's Court, in Fishamble
Street. (Reprinted from original broadside, n.d.)
[29] In the capacity of a postillion, no doubt. [T. S.]
[30] Which means that she kept an eating-house or restaurant, and
became eventually a bankrupt. [T. S.]
[31] The livery of a footman. [T. S.]
[32] As a constable. [T. S.]
[33] An innkeeper. [T. S.]
[34] This paragraph is printed as given by Faulkner in ed. 1735,
vol. iv. [T. S.]
[35] See note on Paul Lorrain, p. 34. It was the duty of the
Ordinary of a prison to compose such dying speeches. [T. S.]
[36] His parents were Dissenters, and gave him a good education. [T.
S.]
[37] Sir Henry Craik remarks on this title: “In modern language this
might well have been entitled, 'The theories of political economy
proved to have no application to Ireland.'“ The word “controlled” is
used in the now obsolete sense of “confuted.” [T. S.]
[38] Sir John Browne, in his “Scheme of the Money Matters of
Ireland” (Dublin, 1729), calculated that the total currency, including
paper, was about £914,000, but the author of “Considerations on
Seasonable Remarks” stated that the entire currency could not be more
than £600,000. Browne was no reliable authority; he is the writer to
whom Swift wrote a reply. See p. 122. [T. S.]
[39] See “A Short View of the State of Ireland,” p. 86. [T. S.]
[40] Lecky refers to a remarkable letter written by an Irish peer in
the March of 1702, and preserved in the “Southwell Correspondence” in
the British Museum, in which the writer complains that the money of the
country is almost gone, and the poverty of the towns so great that it
was feared the Court mourning for the death of William would be the
final blow. (Lecky, vol. i., p. 181, 1892 ed.). [T. S.]
[41] Those of Charles II. and James II. in which, for political
reasons on the part of the Crown, Ireland was peculiarly favoured. [S.]
[42] This was Dr. Nicholas Barbou, the friend of John Asgill and
author of two works on trade and money. After the Great Fire of London
he speculated largely in building, and greatly assisted in making city
improvements. He was the founder of fire insurance in England and was
active in land and bank speculations. He died in 1698, leaving a will
directing that none of his debts should be paid. [T. S.]
[43] The beggars of Ireland are spoken of by Bishop Berkeley. But
Arthur Dobbs, in the second part of his “Essay on Trade,” published in
1731, gives a descriptive picture of the gangs who travelled over
Ireland as professional paupers. In the 2,295 parishes, there was in
each an average of at least ten beggars carrying on their trade the
whole year round; the total number of these wandering paupers he puts
down at over 34,000. Computing 30,000 of them able to work, and
assuming that each beggar could earn 4d. a day in a working year
of 284 days, he calculates that their idleness is a loss to the nation
of £142,000. (Pp. 444-445 of Thom's reprint; Dublin, 1861) [T. S.]
[44] See Swift's terrible satire on the “Modest Proposal for
preventing Children of Poor People from being a burthen.” [T. S.]
[45] A small country village about seven miles from Kells. [T. S.]
[46] Esther Johnson. [T. S.]
[47] Stella's companion and Swift's housekeeper. [T. S.]
[48] See Swift's “Directions to Servants.” [T. S.]
[49] By Acts 18 Charles II c. 2, and 32 Charles II c. 2, enacted in
1665 and 1680, the importation into England from Ireland of all cattle,
sheep, swine, beef, pork, bacon, mutton, cheese and butter, was
absolutely prohibited. The land of Ireland being largely pasture land
and England being the chief and nearest market, these laws practically
destroyed the farming industry. The pernicious acts were passed on
complaint from English land proprietors that the competition from Irish
cattle had lowered their rents in England. “In this manner,” says
Lecky, “the chief source of Irish prosperity was annihilated at a
single blow.” [T. S.]
[50] The original Navigation Act treated Ireland on an equal footing
with England. The act, however, was succeeded in 1663 by that of 15
Charles II c. 7, in which it was declared that no European articles,
with few exceptions, could be imported into the colonies unless they
had been loaded in English-built vessels at English ports. Nor could
goods be brought from English colonies except to English ports. By the
Acts 22 and 23 of Charles II. c. 26 the exclusion of Ireland was
confirmed, and the Acts 7 and 8 of Will. III. c. 22, passed in 1696,
actually prohibited any goods whatever from being imported to Ireland
direct from the English colonies. These are the reasons for Swift's
remark that Ireland's ports were of no more use to Ireland's people
“than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon.” [T. S.]
[51] See note on page 137 of vol. vi of this edition. “The Drapier's
Letters.” [T. S.]
[52] Lecky quotes from the MSS. in the British Museum, from a series
of letters written by Bishop Nicholson, on his journey to Derry, to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. The quotation illustrates the truth of
Swift's remark. “Never did I behold,” writes Nicholson, “even in
Picardy, Westphalia, or Scotland, such dismal marks of hunger and want
as appeared in the countenances of the poor creatures I met with on the
road.” In the “Intelligencer” (No. VI, 1728) Sheridan wrote: “The poor
are sunk to the lowest degrees of misery and poverty—their houses
dunghills, their victuals the blood of their cattle, or the herbs of
the field.” Of the condition of the country thirty years later, the
most terrible of pictures is given by Burdy in his “Life of Skelton”:
“In 1757 a remarkable dearth prevailed in Ireland.... Mr. Skelton went
out into the country to discover the real state of his poor, and
travelled from cottage to cottage, over mountains, rocks, and heath....
In one cabin he found the people eating boiled prushia [a weed with a
yellow flower that grows in cornfields] by itself for their breakfast,
and tasted this sorry food, which seemed nauseous to him. Next morning
he gave orders to have prushia gathered and boiled for his own
breakfast, that he might live on the same sort of food with the poor.
He ate this for one or two days; but at last his stomach turning
against it, he set off immediately for Ballyshannon to buy oatmeal for
them.... One day, when he was travelling in this manner through the
country, he came to a lonely cottage in the mountains, where he found a
poor woman lying in child-bed with a number of children about her. All
she had, in her weak, helpless condition to keep herself and her
children alive, was blood and sorrel boiled up together. The blood, her
husband, who was a herdsman, took from the cattle of others under his
care, for he had none of his own. This was a usual sort of food in that
country in times of scarcity, for they bled the cows for that purpose,
and thus the same cow often afforded both milk and blood.... They were
obliged, when the carriers were bringing the meal to Pettigo, to guard
it with their clubs, as the people of the adjacent parishes strove to
take it by force, in which they sometimes succeeded, hunger making them
desperate.” (Burdy's Life of Skelton. “Works,” vol. i, pp.
lxxx-lxxxii.) [T. S.]
[53] See on this subject the agitation against Wood's halfpence in
the volume dealing with “The Drapier's Letters.” [T. S.]
[54] Faulkner and Scott print this word “irony,” but the original
edition has it as printed in the text. [T. S.]
[55] The original edition has this as “Island.” Scott and the
previous editors print it as in the text. Iceland is, no doubt,
referred to. [T. S.]
[56] Bishop Nicholson, quoted by Lecky, speaks of the miserable
hovels in which the people lived, and the almost complete absence of
clothing. [T. S.]
[57] Hely Hutchinson, in his “Commercial Restraints of Ireland"
(Dublin, 1779; new edit. 1888) points out that the scheme proposed by
the government, and partly executed, by directing a commission under
the great seal for receiving voluntary subscriptions in order to
establish a bank, was a scheme to circulate paper without money. This
and Wood's halfpence seem to have been the nearest approach made at the
time for supplying what Swift here calls “the running cash of the
nation.” [T. S.]
[58] England.
[59] Scotland and Ireland.
[60] The Irish Sea.
[61] The Roman Wall.
[62] The Scottish Highlanders. [T. S]
[63] Charles I, who was delivered by the Scotch into the hands of
the Parliamentary party. [T. S]
[64] See note to “A Short View of the State of Ireland.” [T. S.]
[65] The King of England. [T. S.]
[66] The Lord-Lieutenant. [T. S.]
[67] The English Government filled all the important posts in
Ireland with individuals sent over from England. See “Boulter's
Letters” on this subject of the English rule. [T. S.]
[68] See notes to “A Short View of the State of Ireland,” on the
Navigation Acts and the acts against the exportation of cattle. [T. S.]
[69] The laws against woollen manufacture. [T. S.]
[70] Absentees and place-holders. [T. S.]
[71] The spirit of opposition and enmity to England, declared by the
Scottish Act of Security, according to Swift's view of the relations
between the countries, left no alternative but an union or a war. [S.]
[72] The Act of Union between England and Scotland. [T. S.]
[73] The reference here is to the linen manufactories of Ireland
which were being encouraged by England. [T. S.]
[74] Swift here refers to the sentiment, largely predominant in
Scotland, for the return of the Stuarts. [T. S.]
[75] Alliances with France. [T. S.]
[76] Alluding to the 33rd Henry VIII, providing that the King and
his successors should be kings imperial of both kingdoms, on which the
enemies of Irish independence founded their arguments against it. [S.]
Scott cannot be correct in this note. The allusion is surely to the
enactments known as Poyning's Law. See vol. vi., p. 77 (note) of this
edition of Swift's works. [T. S.]
[77] Disturbances excited by the Scottish colonists in Ulster. [S.]
[78] The subjugation of Scotland by Cromwell. [S.]
[79] That is to say, to interpret Poyning's law in the spirit in
which it was enacted, and give to Ireland the right to make its own
laws. [T. S.]
[80] Free trade and the repeal of the Navigation Act. [T. S.]
[81] Office-holders should not be absentees. [T. S.]
[82] That the land laws of Ireland shall be free from interference
by England, and the produce of the land free to be exported to any
place. [T. S.]
[83] The laws prohibiting the importation of live cattle into
England, and the restrictions as to the woollen industry, were the ruin
of those who held land for grazing purposes. [T. S.]
[84] The Act of 10 and 11 William III., cap. 10, was the final blow
to the woollen industry of Ireland. It was enacted in 1699, and
prohibited the exportation of Irish wool to any other country. In the
fifth letter of Hely Hutchinson's “Commercial Restraints of Ireland"
(1779) will be found a full account of the passing of this Act and its
consequences. [T. S.]
[85] Edward Waters and John Harding, the printers of Swift's
pamphlets. See volume on “The Drapier's Letters.” [T. S.]
[86] The text here given is that of the original manuscript in the
Forster Collection at South Kensington, collated with that given by
Deane Swift in vol. viii. of the 4to edition of 1765. [T. S.]
[87] The letter was written in reply to a letter received from
Messrs. Truman and Layfield. [T. S.]
[88] Dr. William King, Archbishop of Dublin. [T. S.]
[89] Swift betrays here a lamentable knowledge of the geography of
this part of America. Penn, however, may have known no better. [T. S.]
[90] William Burnet, at this time the Governor of Massachusetts, was
the son of Swift's old enemy, Bishop Burnet. [T. S.]
[91] Burnet quarrelled with the Assembly of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire because they would not allow him a fixed salary. The Assembly
attempted to give him instead a fee on ships leaving Boston, but the
English Government refused to allow this. [T. S.]
[92] The original MS. on which this text is based does not contain
the passage here given in brackets. [T. S.]
[93] Swift is here supported by Arthur Dobbs, who in his “Essays on
Trade,” pt. ii. (1731) gives as one of the conditions prejudicial to
trade, the luxury of living and extravagance in food, dress, furniture,
and equipage by the Irish well-to-do. He describes it “as one of the
principal sources of our national evils.” His remedy was a tax on
expensive dress, and rich equipage and furniture. [T. S.]
[94] The text of this tract is based on that given by Deane Swift in
the eighth volume of his edition of Swift's works published in quarto
in 1765. [T. S.]
[95] This refers to Whitshed. [T. S.]
[96] The Fourth. See vol. vi. of present edition. [T. S.]
[97] Some ten years after Swift wrote the above, the roads of
Ireland were thought to be so good as to attract Whitefield's
attention. Lecky quotes Arthur Young, who found Irish roads superior to
those of England. (Lecky's “Ireland,” vol. i., p. 330, 1892 ed.) [T.
S.]
[98] Lecky (vol. i., pp. 333-335, 1892 edit.) gives a detailed
account of the destruction of the fine woods in Ireland which occurred
during the forty years that followed the Revolution. The melancholy
sight of the denuded land drew the attention of a Parliamentary
Commission appointed to inquire into the matter. The Act of 10 Will.
III. 2, c. 12 ordered the planting of a certain number of trees in
every county, “but,” remarks Lecky, “it was insufficient to counteract
the destruction which was due to the cupidity or the fears of the new
proprietors.” [T. S.]
[99] Swift always distinguished between the Irish “barbarians” and
the Irish who were in reality English settlers in Ireland. Swift, for
once, is in accord with the desires of the English Government, who
wished to eradicate the Irish language. His friend the Archbishop of
Dublin and his own college, that of Trinity, were in favour of keeping
the language alive. (See Lecky's “Ireland,” vol. i., pp. 331-332.) [T.
S.]
[100] See Swift's “Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish
Manufactures.” [T. S.]
[101] See Swift's “Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish
Manufactures.” [T. S.]
[102] The text here given is that of Scott read by the
“Miscellaneous Pieces” of 1789. The “Observations” were written,
probably, in 1729. [T. S.]
[103] Monck Mason has an elaborate note on this subject (“Hist. of
St. Patrick's Cathedral,” pp. 320-321, ed. 1819), which is well worth
reprinting here, since it is an excellent statement of facts, and is
fully borne out by Hely Hutchinson's account in his “Commercial
Restraints of Ireland,” to which reference has already been made:
“In the year 1698 a bill was introduced into the English Parliament,
grounded upon complaints, that the woollen manufacture in Ireland
prejudiced the staple trade of England; the matter terminated at last
in an address to the King, wherein the commons 'implored his majesty's
protection and favour on this matter, and that he would make it his
royal care, and enjoin all those whom he employed in Ireland, to use
their utmost diligence, to hinder the exportation of wool from Ireland
(except it be imported into England), and for the discouraging the
woollen manufacture, and increasing the linen manufacture of Ireland.'
Accordingly, on the 16th July, the King wrote a letter of instructions
to the Earl of Galway, in which the following passage appears: 'The
chief thing that must be tried to be prevented, is, that the Irish
parliament takes no notice of what has passed in this here, and that
you make effectual laws for the linen manufacture, and discourage as
far as possible the woollen.'—The Earl of Galway and the other
justices convened the parliament on the 27th of September; in their
speech, they recommended a bill for the encouragement of the
manufactures of linen and hemp, 'which,' say they, 'will be found more
advantageous to this kingdom than the woollen manufacture, which, being
the settled trade of England from whence all foreign markets are
supplied, can never be encouraged here.' The house of commons so far
concurred with the lords justices' sentiments as to say, in their
address of thanks, that they would heartily endeavour to establish the
linen manufacture, and to render the same useful to England, and 'we
hope,' they add, 'to find such a temperament, with respect to the
woollen trade here, that the same may not be injurious to England'
('Cont. Rapin's Hist.,' p. 376). 'And they did,' says Mr. Smith, 'so
far come into a temperament in this case, as, hoping it would be
accepted by way of compromise, to lay a high duty of ... upon all their
woollen manufacture exported; under which, had England acquiesced, I am
persuaded it would have been better for the kingdom in general. But the
false notion of a possible monopoly, made the English deaf to all other
terms of accommodation; by which means they lost the horse rather than
quit the stable' ('Memoirs of Wool,' vol. ii., p. 30). The duties
imposed by the Irish parliament, at this time, upon the export of
manufactured wool, was four shillings on the value of twenty shillings
of the old drapery, and two shillings upon the like value of the new,
except friezes. But this concurrence of the people of Ireland seemed
rather to heighten the jealousy between the two nations, by making the
people of England imagine the manufactures of Ireland were arrived at a
dangerous pitch of improvement, since they could be supposed capable of
bearing so extravagant a duty: accordingly, in the next following year,
the English parliament passed an Act (10-11 William III: cap. 10), that
no person should export from Ireland wool or woollen goods, except to
England or Wales, under high penalties, such goods to be shipped only
from certain ports in Ireland, and to certain ports in England: But
this was not the whole grievance; the old duties upon the import of
those commodities, whether raw or manufactured, into Great Britain,
were left in the same state as before, which amounted nearly to a
prohibition; thus did the English, although they had not themselves any
occasion for those commodities, prohibit, nevertheless, their being
sent to any other nation.
“The discouragement of the woollen manufacture of Ireland, affected
particularly the English settlers there, for the linen was entirely in
the hands of the Scotch, who were established in Ulster, and the Irish
natives had no share in either. It is stated in a pamphlet, entitled,
'A Discourse concerning Ireland, etc. in answer to the Exon and
Barnstaple petitions,' printed 1697-8, that there were then, in the
city and suburbs of Dublin, 12,000 English families, and throughout the
nation, 50,000, who were bred to trades connected with the manufacture
of wool, 'who could no more get their bread in the linen manufacture,
than a London taylor by shoe-making.'
“Mr. Walter Scott says ('Life of Swift,' p. 278) that the Irish
woollen manufacture produced an annual million, but this is not the
fact; Mr. Dobbs in his 'Essay on the Trade of Ireland,' informs us,
from the custom-house books, that in the year 1697 (which immediately
preceded the year in which the address above-mentioned was transmitted
to the king) the total value of Irish woollen exports, of all sorts,
was only £23,614 9s. 6d., and in 1687, when they were at the
highest, they did not exceed £70,521 14s. 0d. It moreover
appears, that the greater part of these exports were of a sort which
did not interfere with the trade of England, £56,415 16s. 0d.
was in friezes, and £2,520 18s. 0d. coarse stockings, the rest
consisted in serges and other stuffs of the new drapery, which affected
not the trade of England generally, but only the particular interests
of Exeter and its neighbourhood, and a very few other inconsiderable
towns.
“But, whatever injury was intended, little prejudice was done to
Ireland, except what followed immediately after the passing of this
Act. It appears from Mr. Dobbs's pamphlet, that, a few years after,
four times the quantity of woollen goods were shipped in each year,
clandestinely, than had ever been exported, legally, before: moreover,
the Irish vastly increased their manufactures for home consumption, and
learned to make fine cloth from Spanish wool: it was only to England
itself that any disadvantage redounded; many manufacturers who were
unsettled by this measure, passed over to Germany, Spain, and to Rouen
and other parts of France, 'from these beginnings they have, in many
branches, so much improved the woollen manufactures of France, as to
vie with the English in foreign markets.—Upon the whole, those nations
may be justly said to have deprived Britain of millions since that
time, instead of the thousands Ireland might possibly have made.'—What
Mr. Dobbs has here asserted, relative to the removal of the
manufacturers, has been confirmed by another tract, 'Letter from a
Clothier a Member of Parliament,' printed in 1731, which informs us
that, for some years after, the English seemed to engross all the
woollen trade, 'but this appearance of benefit abated, as the foreign
factories, raised on the ruin of the Irish, acquired strength': he
shows too, that the importation of unmanufactured wool from Ireland to
England had been gradually decreasing since that time, which was
probably on account of the increase of the illicit trade to foreign
parts, towards the encouragement of which the duties, or legal
transportation, served to act as a bounty of 36 per cent. 'So true it
is, that England can never fall into measures for unreasonably cramping
the industry of the people of Ireland, without doing herself the
greatest prejudice.'“ (Note g, pp. 320-321). [T. S.]
[104] The causes for absenteeism are thus noted by Lecky (“Hist. of
Ireland,” p. 213, vol. i., ed. 1892): “The very large part of the
confiscated land was given to Englishmen who had property and duties in
England, and habitually lived there. Much of it also came into the
market, and as there was very little capital in Ireland, and as
Catholics were forbidden to purchase land, this also passed largely
into the hands of English speculators. Besides, the level of
civilization was much higher in England than in Ireland. The position
of a Protestant landlord, living in the midst of a degraded population,
differing from him in religion and race, had but little attraction, the
political situation of the country closed to an Irish gentleman nearly
every avenue of honourable ambition, and owing to a long series of very
evident causes, the sentiment of public duty was deplorably low. The
economical condition was not checked by any considerable movement in
the opposite direction, for after the suppression of the Irish
manufactures but few Englishmen, except those who obtained Irish
offices, came to Ireland.”
The amount of the rent obtained in Ireland that was spent in England
is estimated elsewhere by Swift to have been at least one-third. In
1729, Prior assessed the amount at £627,000. In the Supplement to his
“List of Absentees,” Prior gives eight further “articles” by which
money was “yearly drawn out of the Kingdom.” See the “Supplement,” pp.
242-245 in Thone's “Collection of Tracts,” Dublin, 1861. [T. S.]
[105] John Erskine, Earl of Mar, has elsewhere been characterized by
Swift as “crooked; he seemed to me to be a gentleman of good sense and
good nature.” The great rebellion of 1715, for which Mar was
responsible, was stirred up by him in favour of the Pretender, and
succeeded so far as to bring the Chevalier to Scotland. The Duke of
Argyll, however, fought his forces, and though the victory remained
undecided, Mar was compelled to seek safety in France. The rebellion
caused so much disturbance in every part of the British Isles that
Ireland suffered greatly from bad trade. [T. S.]
[106] Joshua, Lord Allen. See note on p. 175. [T. S.]
[107] See page 60 of vol. iii. of the present edition. [T. S.]
[108] Chief Justice Whitshed. [T. S.]
[109] See page 14. [T. S.]
[110] Edward Waters. [T. S.]
[111] See pages 96, 235-6, of vol. vi. of present edition. [T. S.]
[112] The person here intimated, Joshua, Lord Allen (whom Swift
elsewhere satirizes under the name of Traulus), was born in 1685. He is
said to have been a weak and dissipated man; and some particulars are
recorded by tradition concerning his marriage with Miss Du Pass (whose
father was clerk of the secretary of state's office in James the
Second's reign, and died in India in 1699), which do very little honour
either to his heart or understanding.
It is reported, that being trepanned into a marriage with this lady,
by a stratagem of the celebrated Lionel, Duke of Dorset, Lord Allen
refused, for some time, to acknowledge her as his wife. But the lady,
after living some time in close retirement, caused an advertisement to
be inserted in the papers, stating the death of a brother in the East
Indies, by which Miss Margaret Du Pass had succeeded to a large
fortune. Accordingly, she put on mourning, and assumed an equipage
conforming to her supposed change of fortune. Lord Allen's affairs
being much deranged, he became now as anxious to prove the marriage
with the wealthy heiress, as he had formerly been to disown the
unportioned damsel; and succeeded, after such opposition as the lady
judged necessary to give colour to the farce. Before the deceit was
discovered, Lady Allen, by her good sense and talents, had obtained
such ascendance over her husband, that they ever afterwards lived in
great harmony.
Lord Allen was, at the time of giving offence to Swift, a
privy-counsellor; and distinguished himself, according to Lodge, in the
House of Peers, by his excellent speeches for the benefit of his
country. He died at Stillorgan, 1742. [S.]
Swift did not allow Lord Allen to rest with this “advertisement.” In
the poem entitled “Traulus,” Allen is gibbetted in some lively rhymes.
He calls him a “motley fruit of mongrel seed,” and traces his descent
from the mother's side (she was the sister of the Earl of Kildare) as
well as the father's (who was the son of Sir Joshua Allen, Lord Mayor
of Dublin in 1673):
“Who could give the looby such airs?
Were they masons, were they butchers?
* * * * *
This was dexterous at the trowel,
That was bred to kill a cow well:
Hence the greasy clumsy mien
In his dress and figure seen;
Hence the mean and sordid soul,
Like his body rank and foul;
Hence that wild suspicious peep,
Like a rogue that steals a sheep;
Hence he learnt the butcher's guile,
How to cut your throat and smile;
Like a butcher doomed for life
In his mouth to wear a knife;
Hence he draws his daily food
From his tenants' vital blood.”
[T. S.]
[113] See note on page 66 of vol. vi. of present edition. The patent
to Lord Dartmouth, granting him the right to coin copper coins,
provided that he should give security to redeem these coins for gold or
silver on demand. John Knox obtained this patent and Colonel Moore
acquired it from Knox after the Revolution. [T. S.]
[114] Of ten pence in every two shillings. [F.]
[115] But M'Culla hath still 30l. per cent. by the scheme, if
they be returned. [F.]
[116] Faulkner's edition adds here: “For the benefit of defrauding
the crown never occurreth to the public, but is wholly turned to the
advantage of those whom the crown employeth.” [T. S.]
[117] See page 89 of vol. vi. of present edition. [T. S.]
[118] 1: Faulkner's edition adds here: “it being a matter wholly out
of my trade.” [T. S.]
[119] See “A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures,”
p. 19. [T. S.]
[120] See Swift's letter to Archbishop King on the weavers, p. 137.
[T. S.]
[121] Edward Waters. [T. S.]
[122] See note prefixed to pamphlet on p. 15. [T. S.]
[123] See notes on pp. 6, 7, 8 and 73 of vol. vi. of present
edition. [T. S.]
[124] See Appendix V. in vol. vi. of present edition. [T. S.]
[125] See page 81. [T. S.]
[126] Nathaniel Mist was the publisher of the “Weekly Journal,” for
which Defoe wrote many important papers. The greater part of his career
as a printer was spent in trials and imprisonments for the “libels"
which appeared in his journal. This was largely due to the fact that
his weekly newspaper became the recognized organ of Jacobites and
“High-fliers.” From 1716 to 1728 he was a pretty busy man with the
government, and finally was compelled to go to France to escape from
prosecution. In France he joined Wharton, but his “Journal” still
continued to be issued until September 21st of the year 1728, which was
the date of the last issue. On the 28th of the same month, however,
appeared its continuation under the title, “Fog's Weekly Journal,” and
this was carried on by Mist's friends. Mist died in 1737. [T. S.]
[127] See notes on pp. 158-159. [T. S.]
[128] “Observations on the Precedent List: Together with a View of
the Trade of Ireland, and the Great Benefits which accrue to England
thereby; with some hints for the further improvement of the same.”
Dublin, second edition, 1729. Reprinted in Thom's “Tracts and Treatises
of Ireland,” 1861, vol. ii. [T. S]
[129] A reference to Alberoni's expedition in aid of the Jacobites
made several years before Swift wrote. [T. S.]
[130] Sir W. Petty gives the population of Ireland as about one
million, two hundred thousand (“Pol. Arithmetic,” 1699). [T. S.]
[131] This is probably a Swiftian plausibility to give an air of
truth to his remarks. Certain parts of America were at that time
reputed to be inhabited by cannibals. [T. S.]
[132] This anecdote is taken from the Description of the Island of
Formosa by that very extraordinary impostor George Psalmanazar, who for
some time passed himself for a native of that distant country. He
afterwards published a retractation of his figments, with many
expressions of contrition, but containing certain very natural
indications of dislike to those who had detected him. The passage
referred to in the text is as follows: “We also eat human flesh, which
I am now convinced is a very barbarous custom, though we feed only upon
our open enemies, slain or made captive in the field, or else upon
malefactors legally executed; the flesh of the latter is our greatest
dainty, and is four times dearer than other rare and delicious meat. We
buy it of the executioner, for the bodies of all public capital
offenders are his fees. As soon as the criminal is dead, he cuts the
body in pieces, squeezes out the blood, and makes his house a shambles
for the flesh of men and women, where all people that can afford it
come and buy. I remember, about ten years ago, a tall,
well-complexioned, pretty fat virgin, about nineteen years of age, and
tire-woman to the queen, was found guilty of high treason, for
designing to poison the king; and accordingly she was condemned to
suffer the most cruel death that could be invented, and her sentence
was, to be nailed to a cross, and kept alive as long as possible. The
sentence was put in execution; when she fainted with the cruel torment,
the hangman gave her strong liquors, &c. to revive her; the sixth day
she died. Her long sufferings, youth, and good constitution, made her
flesh so tender, delicious, and valuable, that the executioner sold it
for above eight tallies; for there was such thronging to this inhuman
market, that men of great fashion thought themselves fortunate if they
could purchase a pound or two of it.” Lond. 1705, p. 112. [S.]
[133] The English government had been making concessions to the
Dissenters, and, of course, Swift satirically alludes here to the
arguments used by the government in the steps they had taken. But the
truth of the matter, Swift hints, was, that those who desired to
abolish the test were more anxious for their pockets than their
consciences. [T. S.]
[134] The inhabitants of a district of Brazil supposed to be
savages, making the name synonymous with savage ignorance. [T. S.]
[135]
“Remove me from this land of slaves,
Where all are fools, and all are knaves,
Where every fool and knave is bought,
Yet kindly sells himself for nought.”
(From Swift's note-book, written while detained at Holyhead in
September, 1727.) [T. S.]
[136] All these are proposals advocated, of course, by Swift
himself, in previous pamphlets and papers. [T. S.]
[137] So that there would be no danger of an objection from England
that the English were suffering from Irish competition. [T. S.]
[138] This was the celebrated periodical founded by Pulteney, after
he had separated himself from Walpole, to which Bolingbroke contributed
his famous letters of an Occasional Writer. The journal carried on a
political war against Walpole's administration, and endeavoured to
bring about the establishment of a new party, to consist of Tories and
the Whigs who could not agree with Walpole's methods. Caleb D'Anvers
was a mere name for a Grub Street hack who was supposed to be the
writer. But Walpole had no difficulty in recognizing the hand of
Bolingbroke, and his reply to the first number of the Occasional Writer
made Bolingbroke wince. [T. S.]
[139] The “Modest Proposal.” See page 207. [T. S.]
[140] Referring to the silks, laces, and dress of the extravagant
women. See pp. 139, 198, 199. [T. S.]
[141] The chief source of income in Ireland came from the pasture
lands on which cattle were bred. The cattle were imported to England.
The English landlords, however, taking alarm, discovered to the Crown
that this importation of Irish cattle was lowering English rents. Two
Acts passed in 1665 and 1680 fully met the wishes of the landlords, and
ruined absolutely the Irish cattle trade. Prevented thus from breeding
cattle, the Irish turned to the breeding of sheep, and established, in
a very short time, an excellent trade in wool. How England ruined this
industry also may be seen from note on p. 158. [T. S.]
[142] Alluding to the facilities afforded for the recruiting of the
French army in Ireland. [T. S.]
[143] The King of France. [T. S.]
[144] Buttermilk. The quotation from Virgil aptly applies to the
food of the Irish peasants, who, in the words of Skelton, bled their
cattle and boiled their blood with sorrel to make a food. [T. S.]
[145] At Christ Church. See note prefixed to this tract. [T. S.]
[146] Sheridan, in his life of Swift, gives an instance of this
which is quoted by Scott. Carteret had appointed Sheridan one of his
domestic chaplains, and the two would often spend hours together, or,
in company with Swift, exchanging talk and knowledge. When Sheridan had
one of the Greek tragedies performed by the scholars of the school he
kept, Carteret wished to read the play over with him before the
performance. At this reading Sheridan was surprised at the ease with
which his patron could translate the original, and, asking him how he
came to know it so well, Carteret told him “that when he was envoy in
Denmark, he had been for a long time confined to his chamber, partly by
illness, and partly by the severity of the weather; and having but few
books with him, he had read Sophocles over and over so often as to be
almost able to repeat the whole verbatim, which impressed it
ever after indelibly on his memory.” [T. S.]
[147] This refers to Richard Tighe, the gentleman who informed on
poor Sheridan for preaching from the text on the anniversary of King
George's accession, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” It
was on this information that Sheridan lost his living. Swift never
afterwards missed an opportunity to ridicule Tighe, and he has
lampooned that individual in several poems. In “The Legion Club” Swift
calls him Dick Fitzbaker, alluding to his descent from one of
Cromwell's contractors, who supplied the army with bread. [T. S.]
[148] “The worst of times” was the expression used by the Whigs when
they referred to Oxford's administration in the last four years of
Queen Anne's reign. [T. S.]
[149] A famous rope-dancer of that time. [H.]
[150] A justice of the peace, who afterwards gave Swift farther
provocation. It was Hutcheson who signed Faulkner's committal to prison
for printing “A New Proposal for the Better Regulation and Improvement
of Quadrille,” a pamphlet which Swift did not write, but which had his
favour. A jeering insinuation was made against the famous Sergeant
Bettesworth, whom Swift had already lampooned, and Bettesworth
complained to the House of Commons. Hutcheson aided Bettesworth in this
prosecution, causing Swift to be roused to a strong indignation against
such unconstitutional proceedings.
“Better we all were in our graves,
Than live in slavery to slaves.”
These are the lines beginning one of his more trenchant lampoons
against the magistrate. [T. S.]
[151] “The beast who had kicked him” is the expression Swift uses
for Tighe in writing to Sheridan in a letter on September 25th, 1725.
In that letter Swift urges Sheridan to revenge, and promises him his
help. [T. S.]
[152] The word is spelt “Galloway” in the original edition. The
earldom of Galway became extinct in 1720. For an account of the earl,
see note on p. 20 of volume v. of this edition. [T. S.]
[153] Joshua, Lord Allen. See p. 175 [T. S.]
[154] Swift's poem entitled “Traulus” was published at this price,
and gives in rhyme much the same matter as is here given in prose. See
p. 176. [T. S.]
[155] Lord Allen was reputed to be wrong in his head. When Swift was
once asked to excuse him for his conduct on the plea that he was mad,
Swift replied: “I know that he is a madman; and, if that were all, no
man living could commiserate his condition more than myself; but, sir,
he is a madman possessed by the devil. I renounce him.” (See Scott's
“Life of Swift,” p. 365.) [T. S.]
[156] The reader may compare what is stated in these two paragraphs
with the same opinion expressed by the author in “The Public Spirit of
the Whigs.” [S.]
[157] See notes on pp. 74, 232. [T. S.]
[158] See note on p. 232. [T. S.]
[159] Mr. Tickell and Mr. Ballaquer. Tickell was Addison's
biographer, and a friend and correspondent of Swift. He was no mean
poet, and though Pope did not care for him Swift did. Tickell was
Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland, and Ballaquer Secretary to
Carteret. [T. S.]
[160] The day of the anniversary of the accession of George I. In
his “History of Solomon the Second” Swift censures his friend strongly
for his indiscretion. [T. S.]
[161] The Richard Tighe afore-mentioned. [T. S.]
[162] Sheridan wrote a poem displeasing to Swift, which Swift thus
animadverts on in the “History of the Second Solomon”: “Having lain
many years under the obloquy of a high Tory and a Jacobite, upon the
present Queen's birthday, he [Dr. Sheridan] writ a song to be performed
before the government and those who attended them, in praise of the
Queen and King, on the common topics of her beauty, wit, family, love
of England, and all other virtues, wherein the King and the royal
children were sharers. It was very hard to avoid the common topics. A
young collegian who had done the same job the year before, got some
reputation on account of his wit. Solomon would needs vie with him, by
which he lost the esteem of his old friends the Tories, and got not the
least interest with the Whigs, for they are now too strong to want
advocates of that kind; and, therefore, one of the lords-justices
reading the verses in some company, said, 'Ah, doctor, this shall not
do.' His name was at length in the title-page; and he did this without
the knowledge or advice of one living soul, as he himself confesseth.”
[T. S.]
[163] Dr. Stopford, Bishop of Cloyne, one of Swift's intimate
friends. Stopford always acknowledged that he owed his advancement
entirely to Swift's kindness. He wrote an elegant Latin tribute to
Swift, given by Scott in an appendix to the “Life.” With Delany and
others he was one of Swift's executors.
[164] Delany was a ripe scholar and much esteemed by Swift, though
the latter had occasion to rebuke him for attempting to court favour
with the Castle people, and for an attack on the “Intelligencer,” a
journal which Swift and Sheridan had started. Delany, however, was a
little jealous of Sheridan's favour with the Dean. He was afterwards
Chancellor of St Patrick's, and wrote a life of Swift. [T. S.]
[165] Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor of Ireland when Queen
Anne died. [Orig. Note.]
[166] Swift himself. [T. S.]
[167] Dr. William King, who died a year or so before Swift wrote.
[T. S.]
[168] In 1724, two under-graduates were expelled from Trinity
College for alleged insolence to the provost. Dr. Delany espoused their
cause with such warmth that it drew upon him very inconvenient
consequences, and he was at length obliged to give satisfaction to the
college by a formal acknowledgment of his offence. [S.]
[169] A very good friend of Swift, at whose place at Gosford, in the
county of Antrim, Swift would often stay for months together. The
reference here is to the project for converting a large house, called
Hamilton's Bawn, situated about two miles from Sir Arthur Acheson's
seat, into a barrack. The project gave rise to Swift's poem, entitled,
“The Grand Question Debated,” given by Scott in vol. xv., p. 171. [T.
S.]
[170] Most of these expressions explain themselves. “Termagants” was
applied to resisters, as used in the old morality plays. “Iconoclasts,”
the name given to those who defaced King William's statue.
“White-rosalists,” given to those who wore the Stuart badge on the 10th
of June, the day of the Pretender's birthday. [T. S.]
[171] By fines is meant the increase made in rents on the occasion
of renewals of leases. [T. S.]
[172] This document was copied by Sir Walter Scott from Dr. Lyon's
papers. It is indorsed, “Queries for Mr. Lindsay,” and “21st Nov.,
1730, Mr. Lindsay's opinion concerning Mr. Gorman, in answer to my
queries.” Mr. Lindsay's answer was:
“I have carefully perused and considered this case, and am clearly
of opinion, that the agent has not made any one answer like a man of
business, but has answered very much like a true agent.
“Nov. 21, 1730. Robert Lindsay.”
[173] Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, near the Castle
grounds. [T. S.]
[174] A sort of sugar-cakes in the shape of hearts. [F.]
[175] A new name for a modern periwig with a long black tail, and
for its owner; now in fashion, Dec. 1, 1733. [F.]
[176] Referring to the last four years of Anne's reign, when Harley
was minister. The expression was a Whig one. [T. S.]
[177] “The squeezing of the orange” was literally a toast among the
disaffected in the reign of William III. [S.]
[178] The author's meaning is just contrary to the literal sense in
the character of Lord Oxford; while he is in truth sneering at the
splendour of Houghton, and the supposed wealth of Sir Robert Walpole.
[S.]
[179] The paragraph here printed in square brackets did not appear
in the original Dublin edition of 1732. [T. S.]
[180] Was a gentleman of a very large estate, and left it to the
poor people of England, to be distributed amongst them annually, as the
Parliament of Great Britain, his executors, should think proper. [F.]
[181] 4,060,000 in 1734 and 4,600,000 in edition of 1733. To make
the total agree with the division below it, the item against Richard
Norton has been altered from 60,000 to 6,000. [T. S.]
[182] See note on page 269. [T. S.]
[183] See note on page 271. [T. S.]
[184] Humphry French, Lord Mayor of Dublin for the year 1732-3, was
elected to succeed Alderman Samuel Burton. [F.]
[185] John Macarrell, Register of the Barracks, shortly after this
date elected to the representation of Carlingford. [F.]
[186] Edward Thompson, member of parliament for York, and a
Commissioner of the Revenue in Ireland. [F.]
[187] Mr. Thompson was presented with the freedom of several
corporations in Ireland. [F.]
[188] Upon the death of Mr. Stoyte, Recorder of the City of Dublin,
in the year 1733, several gentlemen declared themselves candidates to
succeed him; upon which the Dean wrote the above paper, and Eaton
Stannard, Esq. (a gentleman of great worth and honour, and very knowing
in his profession) was elected [F.]
[189] Dr. William King. [T. S.]
[190] The following, from Deane Swift's edition, given by Sir Walter
Scott in his edition of Swift's works, refers to this “very plain
proposal.” It is evidently written by Swift, and is dated, as from the
Deanery House, September 26th, 1726, almost eleven years before the
above tract was issued:
“DEANERY-HOUSE, Sept. 26, 1726.
“The continued concourse of beggars from all parts of the kingdom to
this city, having made it impossible for the several parishes to
maintain their own poor, according to the ancient laws of the land,
several lord mayors did apply themselves to the lord Archbishop of
Dublin, that his grace would direct his clergy, and his churchwardens
of the said city, to appoint badges of brass, copper, or pewter, to be
worn by the poor of the several parishes. The badges to be marked with
the initial letters of the name of each church, and numbered 1, 2, 3,
etc., and to be well sewed and fastened on the right and left shoulder
of the outward garment of each of the said poor, by which they might be
distinguished. And that none of the said poor should go out of their
own parish to beg alms; whereof the beadles were to take care.
“His grace the lord Archbishop, did accordingly give his directions
to the clergy; which, however, have proved wholly ineffectual, by the
fraud, perverseness, or pride of the said poor, several of them openly
protesting 'they will never submit to wear the said badges.' And of
those who received them, almost every one keep them in their pockets,
or hang them in a string about their necks, or fasten them under their
coats, not to be seen, by which means the whole design is eluded; so
that a man may walk from one end of the town to another, without seeing
one beggar regularly badged, and in such great numbers, that they are a
mighty nuisance to the public, most of them being foreigners.
“It is therefore proposed, that his grace the lord Archbishop would
please to call the clergy of the city together, and renew his
directions and exhortations to them, to put the affair of badges
effectually in practice, by such methods as his grace and they shall
agree upon. And I think it would be highly necessary that some paper
should be pasted up in several proper parts of the city, signifying
this order, and exhorting all people to give no alms except to those
poor who are regularly badged, and only while they are in the precincts
of their own parishes. And if something like this were delivered by the
ministers in the reading-desk two or three Lord's-days successively, it
would still be of further use to put this matter upon a right foot. And
that all who offend against this regulation shall be treated as
vagabonds and sturdy beggars.” [T. S.]
[191] Spelt now St. Warburgh's. [T. S.]
[192] About the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dr. Gwythers, a
physician, and fellow of the University of Dublin, brought over with
him a parcel of frogs from England to Ireland, in order to propagate
their species in that kingdom, and threw them into the ditches of the
University Park; but they all perished. Whereupon he sent to England
for some bottles of the frog-spawn, which he threw into those ditches,
by which means the species of frogs was propagated in that kingdom.
However, their number was so small in the year 1720, that a frog was
nowhere to be seen in Ireland, except in the neighbourhood of the
University Park: but within six or seven years after, they spread
thirty, forty, or fifty miles over the country; and so at last, by
degrees, over the whole country. [D. S.]
[193] Swift's uncle, Godwin Swift, for whose memory he had no
special regard, seems to have been concerned in this ingenious anagram
and unfortunate project. [S.]
[194] This reproach has been certainly removed since the Dean
flourished; for the titles of the Irish peerages of late creation have
rather been in the opposite extreme, and resemble, in some instances,
the appellatives in romances and novels.
Thomas O'Brien MacMahon, an Irish author, quoted by Mr. Southey in
his Omniana, in a most angry pamphlet on “The Candour and Good-nature
of Englishmen,” has the following diverting passage, which may serve as
a corollary to Swift's Tract:—“You sent out the children of your
princes,” says he, addressing the Irish, “and sometimes your princes in
person, to enlighten this kingdom, then sitting in utter darkness,
(meaning England) and how have they recompensed you? Why, after
lawlessly distributing your estates, possessed for thirteen centuries
or more, by your illustrious families, whose antiquity and nobility, if
equalled by any nation in the world, none but the immutable God of
Abraham's chosen, though, at present, wandering and afflicted people,
surpasses: After, I say, seizing on your inheritances, and flinging
them among their Cocks, Hens, Crows, Rooks, Daws, Wolves, Lions, Foxes,
Rams, Bulls, Hoggs, and other beasts and birds of prey, or vesting them
in the sweepings of their jails, their Small-woods, Do-littles,
Barebones, Strangeways, Smarts, Sharps, Tarts, Sterns, Churls, and
Savages; their Greens, Blacks, Browns, Greys and Whites; their Smiths,
Carpenters, Brewers, Bakers, and Taylors; their Sutlers, Cutlers,
Butlers, Trustlers and Jugglers; their Norths, Souths, and Wests; their
Fields, Rows, Streets, and Lanes; their Toms-sons, Dicks-sons,
Johns-sons, James-sons, Wills-sons, and Waters-sons; their Shorts,
Longs, Lows, and Squabs; their Parks, Sacks, Tacks, and Jacks; and, to
complete their ingratitude and injustice, they have transported a cargo
of notorious traitors to the Divine Majesty among you, impiously
calling them the Ministers of God's Word.” [S.]
[195] The Tholsel, where criminals for the city were tried, and
where proclamations, etc., were posted. It was invariably called the
Touls'el by the lower class. [S.]
[196] This and the following piece were, according to Sir Walter
Scott, found among the collection of Mr. Smith. The examples of English
blunders which Scott also reprints were given by Sheridan by way of
retaliation to these specimens of Irish blunders noted by Swift. [T.
S.]
[197] This specimen of Irish-English, or what Swift condemned as
such, is taken from an unfinished copy in the Dean's handwriting, found
among Mr. Lyons's papers. [S.]
[198] See note on p. 368. [T. S.]
[199] Dunkin was one of Swift's favourites, to judge by the efforts
Swift made on his behalf. Writing to Alderman Barber (17th January,
1737-38), Swift speaks of him as “a gentleman of much wit and the best
English as well as Latin poet in this kingdom.” Several of Dunkin's
poems were printed in Scott's edition of Swift's works, but his
collected works were issued in 1774. Dunkin was educated at Trinity
College, Dublin. [T. S.]
[200] The “Occasional Writer's” Letters are printed in Lord
Bolingbroke's Works. [N.]
[201] Sir Robert Walpole was by no means negligent of his literary
assistants. But, unfortunately, like an unskilful general, he confided
more in the number than the spirit or discipline of his forces. Arnall,
Concanen, and Henley, were wretched auxiliaries; yet they could not
complain of indifferent pay, since Arnall used to brag, that, in the
course of four years, he had received from the treasury, for his
political writings, the sum of £10,997 6s. 8d. [S.]
[202] The authority for considering this “Account” to be the work of
Swift is Mr. Deane Swift, the editor of the edition of 1765 of Swift's
works. It is included in the eighth volume of the quarto edition issued
that year. Burke also seems to have had no doubt at all about the
authorship. Referring to the Dean's disposition to defend Queen Anne
and to ridicule her successor, he says, “it is probable that the pieces
in which he does it ('Account of the Court of Japan,' and 'Directions
for making a Birth-day Song') were the occasion of most of the other
posthumous articles having been so long withheld from the publick.”
Undoubtedly, there is much in this piece that savours of Swift's method
of dealing with such a subject; but that could easily be imitated by a
clever reader of “Gulliver.” The style, however, in which it is written
is not distinctly Swift's.
At the time this tract was written (1728) the Tory party was
anxiously hoping that the accession of George II. would see the
downfall of Walpole. But the party was doomed to a bitter
disappointment. Walpole not only maintained but added to the power he
enjoyed under George I. By what means this was accomplished the writer
of this piece attempts to hint. Sir Walter Scott thinks the piece was
probably left imperfect, “when the crisis to which the Tories so
anxiously looked forward terminated so undesirably, in the confirmation
of Walpole's power.” [T. S.]
[203] King George. [S.]
[204] Queen Anne. [S.]
[205] Whigs and Tories. Anagrams of Huigse and Toryes. [T. S.]
[206] Hanover. Anagrams for Deuts = Deutsch = German. [T. S.]
[207] Bremen and Lubeck. [S.]
[208] The quadruple alliance, usually accounted the most impolitic
step in the reign of George I., had its rise in his anxiety for his
continental dominions. [S.]
[209] Through all the reign of George I., the Whigs were in
triumphant possession of the government. [S.]
[210] Sir Robert Walpole [S.]
[211] When secretary at war, Walpole received £500 from the
contractors for forage; and although he alleged that it was a sum due
to a third party in the contract, and only remitted through his hands,
he was voted guilty of corruption, expelled the House, and sent to the
Tower, by the Tory Parliament. [S.]
[212] King George II. [S.]
[213] Sir Spencer Compton, Speaker of the House of Commons. [S.]
[214] Sir Thomas Hanmer. [S.]
[215] About a million sterling. [D. S.]
[216] This piece is included here on the authority of Mr. Deane
Swift, and was accepted by Sir Walter Scott on the same authority. The
writing is excellent and bears every mark of Swift's hand. In the note
to the “Letter to the Writer of the Occasional Paper” was included the
heads of a paper which Swift suggested, found by Sir H. Craik. The
present “Answer” may serve as further evidence of Sir H. Craik's
suggestion that Swift may have assisted Pulteney and Bolingbroke on
more than one occasion.
The present text is that of the 1768 quarto edition. [T. S.]
[217] “Gasping,” 1768; “grasping,” Nichols, 1801. [T. S.]
[218]
“For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy—the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By His permissive will, through heaven and earth,
And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems.”—
Paradise Lost, Book III., 682-689. [T. S.]
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.