WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1729.
I am very well pleased with the good opinion you express of me; and
wish it were any way in my power to answer your expectations, for the
service of my country. I have carefully read your several schemes and
proposals, which you think should be offered to the Parliament. In
answer, I will assure you, that, in another place, I have known very
good proposals rejected with contempt by public assemblies, merely
because they were offered from without doors; and yours, perhaps, might
have the same fate, especially if handed into the public by me, who am
not acquainted with three members, nor have the least interest with
one. My printers have been twice prosecuted, to my great expense, on
account of discourses I writ for the public service, without the least
reflection on parties or persons; and the success I had in those of the
Drapier, was not owing to my abilities, but to a lucky juncture, when
the fuel was ready for the first hand that would be at the pains of
kindling it. It is true, both those envenomed prosecutions were the
workmanship of a judge, who is now gone to his own place.[95]
But, let that be as it will, I am determined, henceforth, never to be
the instrument of leaving an innocent man at the mercy of that bench.
It is certain there are several particulars relating to this kingdom
(I have mentioned a few of them in one of my Drapier's letters,[96])
which it were heartily to be wished that the Parliament would take
under their consideration, such as will nowise interfere with England,
otherwise than to its advantage.
The first I shall mention, is touched at in a letter which I
received from one of you, gentlemen, about the highways; which, indeed,
are almost everywhere scandalously neglected. I know a very rich man in
this city, a true lover and saver of his money, who, being possessed of
some adjacent lands, hath been at great charge in repairing effectually
the roads that lead to them; and has assured me that his lands are
thereby advanced four or five shillings an acre, by which he gets
treble interest. But, generally speaking, all over the kingdom the
roads are deplorable; and, what is more particularly barbarous, there
is no sort of provision made for travellers on foot; no, not near this
city, except in a very few places, and in a most wretched manner:
whereas the English are so particularly careful in this point, that you
may travel there an hundred miles with less inconvenience than one mile
here. But, since this may be thought too great a reformation, I shall
only speak of roads for horses, carriages, and cattle.[97]
Ireland is, I think, computed to be one-third smaller than England;
yet, by some natural disadvantages, it would not bear quite the same
proportion in value, with the same encouragement. However, it hath so
happened, for many years past, that it never arrived to above
one-eleventh part in point of riches; and of late, by the continual
decrease of trade, and increase of absentees, with other circumstances
not here to be mentioned, hardly to a fifteenth part; at least, if my
calculations be right, which I doubt are a little too favourable on our
side.
Now, supposing day-labour to be cheaper by one half here than in
England, and our roads, by the nature of our carriages, and the
desolation of our country, to be not worn and beaten above one-eighth
part so much as those of England, which is a very moderate computation,
I do not see why the mending of them would be a greater burthen to this
kingdom than to that.
There have been, I believe, twenty acts of Parliament, in six or
seven years of the late King, for mending long tracts of impassable
ways in several counties of England, by erecting turnpikes, and
receiving passage-money, in a manner that everybody knows. If what I
have advanced be true, it would be hard to give a reason against the
same practice here; since the necessity is as great, the advantage, in
proportion, perhaps much greater, the materials of stone and gravel as
easy to be found, and the workmanship, at least, twice as cheap.
Besides, the work may be done gradually, with allowances for the
poverty of the nation, by so many perch a year; but with a special care
to encourage skill and diligence, and to prevent fraud in the
undertakers, to which we are too liable, and which are not always
confined to those of the meaner sort: but against these, no doubt, the
wisdom of the nation may and will provide.
Another evil, which, in my opinion, deserves the public care, is the
ill management of the bogs; the neglect whereof is a much greater
mischief to this kingdom than most people seem to be aware of.
It is allowed, indeed, by those who are esteemed most skilful in
such matters, that the red, swelling mossy bog, whereof we have so many
large tracts in this island, is not by any means to be fully reduced;
but the skirts, which are covered with a green coat, easily may, being
not an accretion, or annual growth of moss, like the other.
Now, the landlords are generally too careless that they suffer their
tenants to cut their turf in these skirts, as well as the bog adjoined;
whereby there is yearly lost a considerable quantity of land throughout
the kingdom, never to be recovered.
But this is not the greatest part of the mischief: for the main bog,
although, perhaps, not reducible to natural soil, yet, by continuing
large, deep, straight canals through the middle, cleaned at proper
times as low as the channel or gravel, would become a secure
summer-pasture; the margins might, with great profit and ornament, be
filled with quickens, birch, and other trees proper for such a soil,
and the canals be convenient for water-carriage of the turf, which is
now drawn upon sled-cars, with great expense, difficulty, and loss of
time, by reason of the many turf-pits scattered irregularly through the
bog, wherein great numbers of cattle are yearly drowned. And it hath
been, I confess, to me a matter of the greatest vexation, as well as
wonder, to think how any landlord could be so absurd as to suffer such
havoc to be made.
All the acts for encouraging plantations of forest-trees are, I am
told, extremely defective;[98] which, with great submission, must have
been owing to a defect of skill in the contrivers of them. In this
climate, by the continual blowing of the west-south-west wind, hardly
any tree of value will come to perfection that is not planted in
groves, except very rarely, and where there is much land-shelter. I
have not, indeed, read all the acts; but, from enquiry, I cannot learn
that the planting in groves is enjoined. And as to the effects of these
laws, I have not seen the least, in many hundred miles riding, except
about a very few gentlemen's houses, and even those with very little
skill or success. In all the rest, the hedges generally miscarry, as
well as the larger slender twigs planted upon the tops of ditches,
merely for want of common skill and care.
I do not believe that a greater and quicker profit could be made,
than by planting large groves of ash a few feet asunder, which in seven
years would make the best kind of hop-poles, and grow in the same or
less time to a second crop from their roots.
It would likewise be of great use and beauty in our desert scenes,
to oblige all tenants and cottagers to plant ash or elm before their
cabins, and round their potato-gardens, where cattle either do not or
ought not to come to destroy them.
The common objections against all this, drawn from the laziness, the
perverseness, or thievish disposition, of the poor native Irish, might
be easily answered, by shewing the true reasons for such accusations,
and how easily those people may be brought to a less savage manner of
life: but my printers have already suffered too much for my
speculations. However, supposing the size of a native's understanding
just equal to that of a dog or horse, I have often seen those two
animals to be civilized by rewards, at least as much as by punishments.
It would be a noble achievement to abolish the Irish language in
this kingdom, so far at least as to oblige all the natives to speak
only English on every occasion of business, in shops, markets, fairs,
and other places of dealing: yet I am wholly deceived, if this might
not be effectually done in less than half an age, and at a very
trifling expense; for such I look upon a tax to be of only six thousand
pounds a year, to accomplish so great a work.[99] This would, in a
great measure, civilize the most barbarous among them, reconcile them
to our customs and manner of living, and reduce great numbers to the
national religion, whatever kind may then happen to be established. The
method is plain and simple; and although I am too desponding to produce
it, yet I could heartily wish some public thoughts were employed to
reduce this uncultivated people from that idle, savage, beastly,
thievish manner of life, in which they continue sunk to a degree, that
it is almost impossible for a country gentleman to find a servant of
human capacity, or the least tincture of natural honesty; or who does
not live among his own tenants in continual fear of having his
plantations destroyed, his cattle stolen, and his goods pilfered.
The love, affection, or vanity of living in England, continuing to
carry thither so many wealthy families, the consequences thereof,
together with the utter loss of all trade, except what is detrimental,
which hath forced such great numbers of weavers, and others, to seek
their bread in foreign countries; the unhappy practice of stocking such
vast quantities of land with sheep and other cattle, which reduceth
twenty families to one: these events, I say, have exceedingly
depopulated this kingdom for several years past. I should heartily
wish, therefore, under this miserable dearth of money, that those who
are most concerned would think it advisable to save a hundred thousand
pounds a year, which is now sent out of this kingdom, to feed us with
corn. There is not an older or more uncontroverted maxim in the
politics of all wise nations, than that of encouraging agriculture: and
therefore, to what kind of wisdom a practice so directly contrary among
us may be reduced, I am by no means a judge. If labour and people make
the true riches of a nation, what must be the issue where one part of
the people are forced away, and the other part have nothing to do?
If it should be thought proper by wiser heads, that his Majesty
might be applied to in a national way, for giving the kingdom leave to
coin halfpence for its own use, I believe no good subject will be under
the least apprehension that such a request could meet with refusal, or
the least delay. Perhaps we are the only kingdom upon earth, or that
ever was or will be upon earth, which did not enjoy that common right
of civil society, under the proper inspection of its prince or
legislature, to coin money of all usual metals for its own occasions.
Every petty prince in Germany, vassal to the Emperor, enjoys this
privilege. And I have seen in this kingdom several silver pieces, with
the inscription of CIVITAS WATERFORD, DROGHEDAGH, and other towns.