NOTE.
This is, perhaps, as trenchant and fine a piece of writing as
is to
be found in any of those pamphlets Swift wrote for the
alleviation
of the miserable condition of Ireland. The author of the
“Memorial"
to which Swift made this passionate reply was Sir John Browne,
and
the purport of his writing may be easily gathered from Swift's
animadversions.
* * * * *
The text here given is based on that printed by Faulkner in
1735 in
the fourth volume of his collected edition of Swift's works.
Scott
reprints Browne's “Memorial” and his reply to the present
“Answer,”
but they are of little importance and in no way assist us in
our
appreciation of Swift's work. The date of Swift's answer is
given
by Faulkner as “March 25th, 1728,” which year Scott misprints
1738,
evidently a printer's error, though the arrangement of the
order of
the pamphlets in his edition leaves much to be desired.
[T. S.]
AN ANSWER TO A PAPER, CALLED
“A MEMORIAL
OF THE
POOR INHABITANTS, TRADESMEN, AND LABOURERS OF THE KINGDOM OF
IRELAND.”
I received a paper from you, wherever you are, printed without any
name of author or printer, and sent, I suppose, to me among others,
without any particular distinction. It contains a complaint of the
dearness of corn, and some schemes of making it cheaper which I cannot
approve of.
But pray permit me, before I go further, to give you a short history
of the steps by which we arrived at this hopeful situation.
It was, indeed, the shameful practice of too many Irish farmers, to
wear out their ground with ploughing; while, either through poverty,
laziness, or ignorance, they neither took care to manure it as they
ought, nor gave time to any part of the land to recover itself; and,
when their leases are near expiring, being assured that their landlords
would not renew, they ploughed even the meadows, and made such a
havock, that many landlords were considerable sufferers by it.
This gave birth to that abominable race of graziers, who, upon
expiration of the farmer's leases were ready to engross great
quantities of land; and the gentlemen having been before often ill
paid, and their land worn out of heart, were too easily tempted, when a
rich grazier made him an offer to take all his land, and give his
security for payment. Thus a vast tract of land, where twenty or thirty
farmers lived, together with their cottagers and labourers in their
several cabins, became all desolate, and easily managed by one or two
herdsmen and their boys; whereby the master-grazier, with little
trouble, seized to himself the livelihood of a hundred people.
It must be confessed, that the farmers were justly punished for
their knavery, brutality, and folly. But neither are the squires and
landlords to be excused; for to them is owing the depopulating of the
country, the vast number of beggars, and the ruin of those few sorry
improvements we had.
That farmers should be limited in ploughing is very reasonable, and
practised in England, and might have easily been done here by penal
clauses in their leases; but to deprive them, in a manner, altogether
from tilling their lands, was a most stupid want of thinking.
Had the farmers been confined to plough a certain quantity of land,
with a penalty of ten pounds an acre for whatever they exceeded, and
farther limited for the three or four last years of their leases, all
this evil had been prevented; the nation would have saved a million of
money, and been more populous by above two hundred thousand souls.
For a people, denied the benefit of trade, to manage their lands in
such a manner as to produce nothing but what they are forbidden to
trade with,[83] or only such things as they can neither export nor
manufacture to advantage, is an absurdity that a wild Indian would be
ashamed of; especially when we add, that we are content to purchase
this hopeful commerce, by sending to foreign markets for our daily
bread.
The grazier's employment is to feed great flocks of sheep, or black
cattle, or both. With regard to sheep, as folly is usually accompanied
with perverseness, so it is here. There is something so monstrous to
deal in a commodity (further than for our own use) which we are not
allowed to export manufactured, nor even unmanufactured, but to one
certain country, and only to some few ports in that country;[84] there
is, I say, something so sottish, that it wants a name in our language
to express it by: and the good of it is, that the more sheep we have,
the fewer human creatures are left to wear the wool, or eat the flesh.
Ajax was mad, when he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies; but we
shall never be sober, until we have the same way of thinking.
The other part of the grazier's business is, what we call
black-cattle, producing hides, tallow, and beef for exportation: all
which are good and useful commodities, if rightly managed. But it
seems, the greatest part of the hides are sent out raw, for want of
bark to tan them; and that want will daily grow stronger; for I doubt
the new project of tanning without it is at an end. Our beef, I am
afraid, still continues scandalous in foreign markets, for the old
reasons. But our tallow, for anything I know, may be good. However, to
bestow the whole kingdom on beef and mutton, and thereby drive out half
the people who should eat their share, and force the rest to send
sometimes as far as Egypt for bread to eat with it, is a most peculiar
and distinguished piece of public economy, of which I have no
comprehension.
I know very well that our ancestors the Scythians, and their
posterity our kinsmen the Tartars, lived upon the blood, and milk, and
raw flesh of their cattle, without one grain of corn; but I confess
myself so degenerate, that I am not easy without bread to my victuals.
What amazed me for a week or two, was to see, in this prodigious
plenty of cattle, and dearth of human creatures, and want of bread, as
well as money to buy it, that all kind of flesh-meat should be
monstrously dear, beyond what was ever known in this kingdom. I thought
it a defect in the laws, that there was not some regulation in the
price of flesh, as well as bread: but I imagine myself to have guessed
out the reason: In short, I am apt to think that the whole kingdom is
overstocked with cattle, both black and white; and as it is observed,
that the poor Irish have a vanity to be rather owners of two lean cows,
than one fat, although with double the charge of grazing, and but half
the quantity of milk; so I conceive it much more difficult at present
to find a fat bullock or wether, than it would be if half of both were
fairly knocked on the head: for I am assured that the district in the
several markets called Carrion Row is as reasonable as the poor can
desire; only the circumstance of money to purchase it, and of trade, or
labour, to purchase that money, are indeed wholly wanting.
Now, sir, to return more particularly to you and your memorial.
A hundred thousand barrels of wheat, you say, should be imported
hither; and ten thousand pounds premium to the importers. Have you
looked into the purse of the nation? I am no commissioner of the
treasury; but am well assured that the whole running cash would not
supply you with a sum to purchase so much corn, which, only at twenty
shillings a barrel, will be a hundred thousand pounds; and ten thousand
more for the premiums. But you will traffic for your corn with other
goods: and where are those goods? if you had them, they are all engaged
to pay the rents of absentees, and other occasions in London, besides a
huge balance of trade this year against us. Will foreigners take our
bankers' papers? I suppose they will value it at little more than so
much a quire. Where are these rich farmers and engrossers of corn, in
so bad a year, and so little sowing?
You are in pain of two shillings premium, and forget the twenty
shillings for the price; find me out the latter, and I will engage for
the former.
Your scheme for a tax for raising such a sum is all visionary, and
owing to a great want of knowledge in the miserable state of
this nation. Tea, coffee, sugar, spices, wine, and foreign clothes, are
the particulars you mention upon which this tax should be raised. I
will allow the two first; because they are unwholesome; and the last,
because I should be glad if they were all burned: but I beg you will
leave us our wine to make us a while forget our misery; or give your
tenants leave to plough for barley. But I will tell you a secret, which
I learned many years ago from the commissioners of the customs in
London: they said, when any commodity appeared to be taxed above a
moderate rate, the consequence was, to lessen that branch of the
revenue by one half; and one of those gentlemen pleasantly told me,
that the mistake of parliaments, on such occasions, was owing to an
error of computing two and two to make four; whereas, in the business
of laying impositions, two and two never made more than one; which
happens by lessening the import, and the strong temptation of running
such goods as paid high duties. At least in this kingdom, although the
women are as vain and extravagant as their lovers or their husbands can
deserve, and the men are fond enough of wine; yet the number of both
who can afford such expenses is so small, that the major part must
refuse gratifying themselves, and the duties will rather be lessened
than increased. But, allowing no force in this argument; yet so
preternatural a sum as one hundred and ten thousand pounds, raised all
on a sudden, (for there is no dallying with hunger,) is just in
proportion with raising a million and a half in England; which, as
things now stand, would probably bring that opulent kingdom under some
difficulties.
You are concerned how strange and surprising it would be in foreign
parts to hear that the poor were starving in a RICH country, &c. Are
you in earnest? Is Ireland the rich country you mean? Or are you
insulting our poverty? Were you ever out of Ireland? Or were you ever
in it till of late? You may probably have a good employment, and are
saving all you can to purchase a good estate in England. But by talking
so familiarly of one hundred and ten thousand pounds, by a tax upon a
few commodities, it is plain you are either naturally or affectedly
ignorant of our present condition: or else you would know and allow,
that such a sum is not to be raised here, without a general excise;
since, in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than
England ever did in the height of the war. And when you have brought
over your corn, who will be the buyers? Most certainly not the poor,
who will not be able to purchase the twentieth part of it.
Sir, upon the whole, your paper is a very crude piece, liable to
more objections than there are lines; but I think your meaning is good,
and so far you are pardonable.
If you will propose a general contribution in supporting the poor in
potatoes and butter-milk, till the new corn comes in, perhaps you may
succeed better, because the thing at least is possible; and I think if
our brethren in England would contribute upon this emergency, out of
the million they gain from us every year, they would do a piece of
justice as well as charity. In the mean time, go and preach to your own
tenants, to fall to the plough as fast as they can; and prevail with
your neighbouring squires to do the same with theirs; or else die with
the guilt of having driven away half the inhabitants, and starving the
rest. For as to your scheme of raising one hundred and ten thousand
pounds, it is as vain as that of Rabelais; which was, to squeeze out
wind from the posteriors of a dead ass.
But why all this concern for the poor? We want them not, as the
country is now managed; they may follow thousands of their leaders, and
seek their bread abroad. Where the plough has no work, one family can
do the business of fifty, and you may send away the other forty-nine.
An admirable piece of husbandry, never known or practised by the wisest
nations, who erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country!
If so wretched a state of things would allow it, methinks I could
have a malicious pleasure, after all the warning I have in vain given
the public, at my own peril, for several years past, to see the
consequences and events answering in every particular. I pretend to no
sagacity: what I writ was little more than what I had discoursed to
several persons, who were generally of my opinion; and it was obvious
to every common understanding, that such effects must needs follow from
such causes;—a fair issue of things begun upon party rage, while some
sacrificed the public to fury, and others to ambition: while a spirit
of faction and oppression reigned in every part of the country, where
gentlemen, instead of consulting the ease of their tenants, or
cultivating their lands, were worrying one another upon points of Whig
and Tory, of High Church and Low Church; which no more concerned them
than the long and famous controversy of strops for razors: while
agriculture was wholly discouraged, and consequently half the farmers
and labourers, and poorer tradesmen, forced to beggary or banishment.
“Wisdom crieth in the streets: Because I have called on ye; I have
stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought
all my counsels, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at
your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh.”
I have now done with your Memorial, and freely excuse your mistakes,
since you appear to write as a stranger, and as of a country which is
left at liberty to enjoy the benefits of nature, and to make the best
of those advantages which God hath given it, in soil, climate, and
situation.
But having lately sent out a paper, entitled, A Short View of the
State of Ireland; and hearing of an objection, that some people
think I have treated the memory of the late Lord Chief Justice Whitshed
with an appearance of severity; since I may not probably have another
opportunity of explaining myself in that particular, I choose to do it
here. Laying it, therefore, down for a postulatum, which I suppose will
be universally granted, that no little creature of so mean a birth and
genius, had ever the honour to be a greater enemy to his country, and
to all kinds of virtue, than HE, I answer thus; Whether there be two
different goddesses called Fame, as some authors contend, or only one
goddess sounding two different trumpets, it is certain that people
distinguished for their villainy have as good a title for a blast from
the proper trumpet, as those who are most renowned for their virtues
have from the other; and have equal reason to complain if it be refused
them. And accordingly the names of the most celebrated profligates have
been faithfully transmitted down to posterity. And although the person
here understood acted his part in an obscure corner of the world, yet
his talents might have shone with lustre enough in the noblest scene.
As to my naming a person dead, the plain honest reason is the best.
He was armed with power, guilt, and will to do mischief, even where he
was not provoked, as appeared by his prosecuting two printers,[85] one
to death, and both to ruin, who had neither offended God nor the King,
nor him nor the public.
What an encouragement to vice is this! If an ill man be alive, and
in power, we dare not attack him; and if he be weary of the world, or
of his own villainies, he has nothing to do but die, and then his
reputation is safe. For these excellent casuists know just Latin enough
to have heard a most foolish precept, that de mortuis nil nisi bonum
; so that if Socrates, and Anytus his accuser, had happened to die
together, the charity of survivors must either have obliged them to
hold their peace, or to fix the same character on both. The only crime
of charging the dead is, when the least doubt remains whether the
accusation be true; but when men are openly abandoned, and lost to all
shame, they have no reason to think it hard if their memory be
reproached. Whoever reports, or otherwise publisheth, any thing which
it is possible may be false, that man is a slanderer; hic niger est,
hunc tu, Romane, caveto. Even the least misrepresentation, or
aggravation of facts, deserves the same censure, in some degree, but in
this case, I am quite deceived if my error hath not been on the side of
extenuation.
I have now present before me the idea of some persons (I know not in
what part of the world) who spend every moment of their lives, and
every turn of their thoughts, while they are awake, (and probably of
their dreams while they sleep,) in the most detestable actions and
designs; who delight in mischief, scandal, and obloquy, with the hatred
and contempt of all mankind against them, but chiefly of those among
their own party and their own family; such whose odious qualities rival
each other for perfection: avarice, brutality, faction, pride, malice,
treachery, noise, impudence, dullness, ignorance, vanity, and revenge,
contending every moment for superiority in their breasts. Such
creatures are not to be reformed, neither is it prudence or safety to
attempt a reformation. Yet, although their memories will rot, there may
be some benefit for their survivors to smell it while it is rotting.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
A. B.
Dublin,
March 25th, 1728.