The shifting combinations of party, from the settlement of the
constitution at the Revolution to a later period, is an attractive study
to any who wish to find the origin of abuses which have long vexed the
political life of England. Besides, it is wholesome and instructive to be
carried away from the modern difficulty to the broader issues which have
gradually led to the present complication.
William III. was a Whig, and his successor a Tory, but except for short
periods no Tory party was able in either reign to carry on the government
upon Tory principles. William made no complete change of ministry during
his reign, only modifying its composition according to what appeared the
prevailing sentiment of the parliament or the nation. It was composed of
both parties; the Whigs predominated till the close of the reign, when
their opponents acquired ascendency. Anne's first ministry was Tory, but a
change was soon wrought by a favourite of the court who happened to be a
Whig and who soon turned the scale. Some knowledge of the character of the
monarch is indispensable to a clear understanding of the times. In 1702,
Anne ascended the throne. The queen's notions of government were those of
her family--narrow and despotic. She would have been as arbitrary in her
conduct as Elizabeth, but that her actions were restrained by the
imbecility of her mind. The queen was the constant slave of favourites
who, in their turn, were the tools of intriguing politicians. Events of
the greatest importance were crowded into the short space of the twelve
years which covered her reign, and the most distinguished intellects
adorned the period.
It was because the queen was fascinated by the Duchess of Marlborough that
her reign was adorned by the glories of Ramillies and Blenheim: it was
because Mrs. Abigail Masham artfully supplanted her benefactress in royal
favour, that a stop was put to the war which ravaged the Continent, while
by a chambermaid's intrigue Bolingbroke triumphed over his rival, the Earl
of Oxford.
During the first part of Anne's reign, Marlborough was paramount in the
Houses of Parliament and his wife in the closet. The Tories came into
power on the queen's accession, with Marlborough and Godolphin as leaders.
They substantially maintained the policy of King William in prosecuting
the war with France, which resulted in making England illustrious in
Europe.
Whig principles soon acquired a decided majority in the House, when an act
of national importance took place, the effect of which thrilled the
empire. The queen and the duchess quarrelled, and the intriguing
waiting-maid stepped into the latter's place. Besides the queen's whims
she had a superstitious reverence for the Church; and had been taught to
regard the Whigs as Republicans and Dissenters, who wished to subvert the
monarchy. Harley traded on this weakness through the instrumentality of
Mrs. Masham. This lady was used by him to oust Marlborough and Godolphin,
and she continued the tool of Harley and St. John, who now became the
chiefs of the new ministry. A jealousy between these two ministers
afterwards sprang up, which finally resulted in a quarrel and separation.
St. John, created Viscount Bolingbroke, plotted with Mrs. Masham to
procure the crown for the Pretender, but the cabal oozed out and alarmed
the Tories. The last night of the queen's life was spent in listening to
an open quarrel between the waiting-maid and the minister. At two o'clock
in the morning she went out of the room to die; she had strength, however,
to defeat the schemers by consigning the staff of state to Lord
Shrewsbury. "Take it," she said, "for the good of my country." They were
the last, perhaps the most pathetic words of her life. When Bolingbroke
was defeated, the Whigs came into power and continued in office till the
reign of George III.
It was during the reign of William III. that Swift began his political
career as a Whig. His patron, Sir William Temple, introduced him to the
king, who was so impressed with his talents that he offered to make him a
captain of dragoons. Had he accepted this offer, he might have become a
second Cromwell. As this distinction was declined, the king promised to
see to his future interest. On the death of Temple, Swift edited the works
of his patron, dedicated them to the sovereign, and reminded him of his
promise. Neither the dedication nor the memorial was noticed. Swift had to
fall back on the post of chaplain and private secretary to the Earl of
Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He became a political
writer on the side of the Whigs, and associated with Addison, Steele, and
Halifax. From the party leaders he received scores of promises and in the
end was neglected. The cup of preferment was twice dashed from his hand;
on the first occasion when Lord Berkeley would have given him a bishopric,
his name was vetoed by the Primate on the grounds of his youth, and on the
second when he was named for a vacant canonry, but at the last moment the
prize was given to another.
During Anne's reign Swift paid frequent visits to England, and became
closely connected with the leading Tories. In 1710 he broke with the Whigs
and united with Harley and the Tory administration. The five last years of
Anne's government found him playing a prominent part in English politics
as the leading political writer of the Tories. He was on terms of the
closest intimacy with Oxford (Harley) and Bolingbroke, and attempted to
heal the breach between the rival statesmen. He helped the Tories in a
paper called the _Examiner_, upholding the policy of the ministers and
supplying his party with the arguments they would have used if they had
had the brains to think of them. This series of articles culminated in the
"Conduct of the Allies," a pamphlet which brought about the disgrace of
Marlborough and made the peace popular. In it the author denounced the war
as the plot of a ring of Whig stock-jobbers and monied men. These weekly
papers in the _Examiner_ produced a great effect upon the public mind and
called forth a multitude of opponents. Swift gave the Press the wonderful
position it holds now. He almost created the "leading article;" and though
his contributions will not bear comparison with the light style of our own
day, they suited his times. They were written in a plain, homely style,
for Swift had a thorough contempt for abstract thought and abstract
politics; indeed, his low estimate of men convinced him that they were
about as good for flying as for thinking. Mr. Leslie Stephen aptly states
that Swift's pamphlets were rather "blows than words;" he had serious
political effects to produce, and what he had to prove it was necessary to
say in plain words, for honest Tory squires of the country party to
understand and obey.
The _Examiner_, the _Medley_, the _Tattler_, and the pamphlets of that day
bear no analogy to the modern newspaper; their influence did not penetrate
to the lower classes of the community, who were still without education.
Swift is condemned by many who are not conversant with his character, his
writings, or the times in which he lived. In detached views, no man was
more liable to be misunderstood; his individual acts must be compared
with his entire conduct, in order to give him his proper place in the
gallery of historical characters. The charge of deserting his party is
answered by Dr. Johnson, whose evidence is of greater value as he never
professed to be his friend. "Swift, by early education, had been
associated with the Whigs; but he deserted them when they deserted their
principles, yet he never ran into the opposite extreme; for he continued
throughout his life to retain the disposition which he assigned to the
Church of England man, of thinking commonly with the Whigs of the State
and with the Tories of the Church."
"Swift," say his opponents, "rails at the whole human race;" so he does,
and so do we all, at particular times and seasons; when long experience
has shown us the selfishness of some, the hollowness of others, and the
base ingratitude of the world. Not having lifted his voice in protestation
against the terrible penal laws inflicted on his Catholic brethren, and
enacted before his door, is, perhaps, the heaviest indictment brought
against his name, and the one which, on examination, will prove the most
futile. He was the last man who, from his connection with a discarded Tory
party, could have taken action with any effect; for if he had made the
attempt, and if complaints had originated from it, they would have been
interpreted into murmurs of rebellion. One revolt had been put down in
Scotland, in which it was supposed that every Catholic in Ireland was
implicated, and another which was hatching in the country, broke out in
1745; consequently, any interference of Swift on behalf of the Roman
Catholics would have drawn upon him the total displeasure of the
government and have caused him to be voted an enemy to his country, as was
done in the case of Lucas, twenty years after. His words on another
occasion show that he was not wanting in sympathy towards the native
Irish. "The English should be ashamed of the reproaches they cast on their
ignorance, dullness, and want of courage; defects arising only from the
poverty and slavery they suffer from their inhuman neighbours, and the
base, corrupt spirit of too many of the gentry. By such treatment as this
the very Grecians are grown slavish, ignorant, and superstitious. I do
assert that from several experiments I have made in travelling in both
England and Ireland, I have found the poor cottagers in the latter
kingdom, who could speak our language, to have a much better natural taste
for good sense, humour, and raillery than ever I observed among people of
the sort in England. But the million of oppressions the national Irish lie
under, the tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their
priests and the general misery of the whole nation, have been enough to
damp the best spirits under the sun."
When Swift's friends were out of power, Oxford no longer at Court and
Bolingbroke in exile, he returned to Ireland, and after visiting several
parts of the country, and making himself acquainted with the exact
condition of the people, he took up the cause of Ireland with a vigour
rarely exhibited by any patriot. The last twenty-five years of his sane
life were given to his country, during which time he devoted almost all
his energy to Irish concerns. His stern sense of justice prompted him to
lay bare the wrongs of his native land with the cool calculation of a
banker examining accounts, or that of a surgeon cutting open a tumour. His
letters, pamphlets, and sermons are full of allusions to the miseries and
disabilities of the Irish. In writing to Pope, he disclaims the title of
Patriot, and gives us exactly his motive. "What I do," he says, "is owing
to perfect rage and resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery,
folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live." It is said
that he was a disappointed, mortified man. I allow he was. Swift was
ill-used as well as his country. Was he therefore not to resent the
injuries offered her because wrongs were heaped on himself, or, after
remaining quiet under the disappointments of years, are we to suppose
that at the end of that period his own private grievances ceased to be
intolerable, and that the public provocations which became urgent had no
effect upon him?
About 1720, a narrow, exclusive clique governed Ireland in avowed contempt
of all phases of Irish opinion. The need of reform had occupied the
attention only of an insignificant handful. None had yet succeeded in
rousing a national spirit to resist the people's wrongs, an
over-insistence of which wrongs was looked upon as veiled Jacobitism. No
doubt Swift's first motive was opposition to Walpole and his party. He
looked back with bitterness to the fall of his friends. He disliked the
cant of the Whigs and their travesty of liberty; from that moment his real
interest in Ireland began. Swift scorned Jacobitism, and had a righteous
contempt for "divine right and absolute prerogative." He justified the
Revolution; was opposed to a Popish successor; had a mortal antipathy to a
standing army in time of peace; desired that parliaments should be annual;
disliked the monied interest in opposition to the territorial; feared the
growth of the national debt; and dreaded further encroachments on the
liberty of the subject. He believed the Whig government of Ireland to be
founded on corruption. All these opinions went to swell the current of
his indignation against Irish wrongs, and it was in consequence of them
that he lashed the government with his scorpion pen.
The papers written by Swift during the years 1720 to 1734 are now little
studied by the people or their representatives; nevertheless, if carefully
examined, they will be found useful in throwing light upon the unsolved
problem. They deal with everything connected with the country: with banks,
currency, agriculture, fisheries, grazing, beggars, planting,
bog-reclaiming and road-making; and all in a style peculiarly his own, a
style seldom equalled and never surpassed. His pictures of the state of
the country present curious parallels to what we find to-day. There are,
of course, references to grievances which have long ceased to exist; such
as the penal laws, and the restriction on trade, but there are many
long-standing evils which are not much better now than they were in
Swift's day. The rack-renting, absentee landlords are more numerous in
1887 than they were in 1730, while the improvements effected by the
tenants were as much a dead loss of capital in the time of Swift, as in
the days of Gladstone.
The secret of Swift's forcible utterances is that he infused himself into
everything he wrote; and his writings, in consequence, exhibit, not merely
his intellectual power, but also his moral nature, his principles, his
prejudices, even his temper. Swift possessed the most masculine intellect
of his age, and was the most earnest thinker of his times. He wrote like a
man of the world, and a gentleman; scorning the conceits of rhetorical
flourish, and never stooping to _ad misericordiam_ appeals for sympathy.
Of all writers of the English language, his style most approximates to
that of the old orators of Greece in force, rapidity, directness,
dexterity, luminous statement, and honest homeliness. The reader is
impelled with his vigour, as a soldier by the blast of a trumpet; while
his feelings are captivated by his author's manifest sincerity; his
outburst of derisive scorn and withering invective, alternately heat and
chill the blood. Perhaps his merit is most revealed in the profound
sagacity of his political observations, infusing into his country that
spirit which enabled her to demand those rights she at last established.
Swift's character rose in Ireland with his defence of it in 1724; for, by
his conduct then, he acquired an esteem and influence which can never be
forgotten. The question of consideration at that day was not whether
Wood's halfpence were good or bad:--the question was, whether an
enterprising manufacturer of copper should prevail against Ireland. An
insulting patent, obtained in the most insidious way, was issued by the
British Cabinet without consulting the legitimate rulers of the country.
Against it the grand juries protested, the corporations protested, the
Irish parliament protested. All failed. At last there stood forth a
private clergyman, whose party was proscribed and himself persecuted, and
he carried the country at his back and forced the British minister to
retire within his trenches. Ireland, trampled on by a British minister, by
a British and Irish parliament; Ireland that had lost her trade, her
judicature, her parliament; sunk with the weight of oppression, prevails
under the direction of a solitary priest, who not only inspired but
instructed his countrymen in a magnificent vindication of their liberty
and the most noble repudiation of dependence ever taught a nation; telling
them, "that by the law of God, of nature, of nations, and of their country
they are and ought to be as free a people as their brethren in England."
The patriot rose above the divine. He taught his country to protest
against her grievances, and gave her a spirit by which she redressed them.
Besides, he created a public opinion in "a nation of slaves" and used it
as a political force against a vicious system of government. "For my own
part," says Swift, referring to the imposition of the copper coinage, "who
am but a man of obscure condition, I do solemnly declare in the presence
of Almighty God that I will suffer the most ignominious torturing death,
rather than submit to receive this accursed coin, or any other that shall
be liable to these objections, until they shall be forced upon me by a law
of my own country, and if that shall ever happen, I will transport myself
into some foreign land, and eat the bread of poverty among a free people."
And who was this man who touched with fire the hearts of a nation and
played on their feelings as a skilful musician runs his fingers over the
keys of an instrument? A simple journalist, of obscure origin, without
rank or station, with nothing but a beggarly Irish living to fall back
upon, yet endowed with heaven-born genius and the pride of an insulted
god. He treated art like man: with the same sovereign pride scribbling his
articles in haste, scorning the wretched necessity for reading them over,
putting his name to nothing he wrote; letting every piece make its way on
its own merits, recommended by none. Swift had the soul of a dictator and
the heart of a woman.
This self-devouring heart could not understand the callousness and
indifference of the world. He asked: "Do not the corruptions and
villainies of men eat your flesh and consume your spirits?" Swift, like
his great Master, was moved by compassion for the multitude. He knew what
poverty and scorn were, even at an age when the mind expands and the path
of life is sown with generous hopes. At that time, his career was crushed
with the iron ring of poverty; maintained by the alms of his family;
secretary to a flattered, gouty courtier, at the magnificent salary of
20_l._ a year, and a seat at the servants' table: obliged to submit to the
whims of my lord and the fancies of an acidulous virgin, my lord's sister;
lured with false hopes; and forced, after an attempt at independence, to
resume the livery which scorched his soul. When writing his directions to
servants, he was relating with bitterness what he himself had suffered;
his proud heart bursting at the memory of indignities received while his
lips were locked. Under an outward calm, a tempest of wrath and desire
lashed his soul. Twenty years of insult and humiliation, the inner tempest
raging, as all his brilliant dreams faded from hope deferred;--such was
the man who moved his country to its centre and won her eternal gratitude.
In discussing the burning topics of the day, Swift had against him the
king, his parliament, and all the people of England, together with the
Irish government and the Irish judges. The Irish parliament, whose cause
he defended, could not have saved him: that sycophant assembly could not
save itself, and was besides so lowered and debased by the over-ruling
power of England, that it was more likely to become his prosecutor than
his protector. Swift stood like Atlas, unmoved, and so laid the foundation
of his country's liberty.
"Swift was honoured," says Johnson, "by the populace of Ireland as their
champion, patron, and instructor, and gained such power as, considered
both in its extent and duration, scarce any man has ever enjoyed without
greater wealth or higher station. The benefit was indeed great. He had
rescued Ireland from a very oppressive and predatory invasion: and the
popularity which he had gained he was very diligent to keep, by appearing
forward and zealous on every occasion when the public interest was
supposed to be involved. He showed clearly that wit, confederated with
truth, had such fire as authority was not able to resist. He said truly of
himself that Ireland was his debtor. It was from this time, when he first
began to patronize the Irish, that they may date their riches and
prosperity. He taught them first to know their own interest, their weight
and their strength; and gave them spirit to assert that equality with
their fellow-subjects, to which they have ever since been making vigorous
advances, and to claim those rights which they have at last established.
Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to their benefactor, for they
reverenced him as a guardian and obeyed him as a dictator."
The birth of political and patriotic spirit in Ireland may be traced to
the "Drapier's Letters." No agitation that has since taken place in the
country has been so immediately and completely successful. The whole power
of the English government was found ineffectual to cope with the
opposition that had been roused, and marshalled by one man. The Letters
brought Swift fame and influence, and from the date of their publication,
he became the most powerful and popular man in Ireland. The Irish obeyed
his words as if they were the fiat of an oracle.
Swift was no hack writer, lending his pen to any administration that paid
for his services; his individuality placed him above the herd of writers,
and he scorned to be used in this way. When Harley sent him a 50_l._
cheque for his first articles in the _Examiner_, he returned it, and
haughtily demanded an apology, which was promptly given. He warned the
ministers that he acted with them on terms of equality, and that he would
not tolerate even coldness on their part; "for it is what I would hardly
bear from a crowned head; no subject's favour was worth it." He
afterwards explained, "If we let these great ministers pretend too much,
there will be no governing them."
After the publication of the fourth Drapier's Letter, the government
offered a reward for the apprehension of the printer; Swift was so enraged
at this proceeding that he suddenly entered the reception-room, elbowed
his way up to the Lord-Lieutenant, and, with indignation on his
countenance and thunder in his voice, said: "So, my Lord, this is a
glorious exploit you performed yesterday in suffering a proclamation
against a poor shop-keeper, whose only crime is an honest endeavour to
save his country from ruin;" and then added, with a bitter laugh, "I
suppose your lordship will expect a statue in copper for your services to
Mr. Wood."
The accession of George I. exiled Swift to Ireland, at that time the most
impoverished country on the face of the globe. Swift regarded Dublin as a
"good enough place to die in." No wonder, when he showed that there were
not found in it five gentlemen who could give a dinner at which a scholar
and gentleman could find congenial companionship. Ireland then was in a
state of national ruin and semi-barbarism; one of the most palpable evils
of Irish life was absenteeism. It was the habit of the English officials
elected to remunerative offices, to employ a deputy to perform the duty on
the tenth of the salary--to come over in batches, landing at Ringsend on
Saturday night, receiving the sacrament at the nearest church on Sunday
morning, taking the oaths on Monday in the Courts, and setting sail for
England in the afternoon, leaving no trace of their existence in Ireland,
save their names on the civil list as recipients of a salary.
Out of a total rental of 1,800,000_l._ about 600,000_l._ was spent in
England. There was nothing to encourage a landlord to live in the country;
no political career was open to him; all the offices in his country went
to strangers. He was without education or any intellectual interest;
nothing was left him but lavish displays of brutal luxury, endless
carouses, and barbaric hospitality. The Irish landlords were despised for
their rude manners by the fresh importations from England; they repaid
this contempt on their tenants.
The vast majority of the Catholics were without the protection of the law;
absolutely ignorant and sunk in an abyss of poverty. The poor peasant, as
soon as the potatoes were planted, shut up his damp, smoky hut, and
started soliciting alms through the country: idle and lazy, he wandered
from house to house. Begging became a recognized profession. Adepts were
hired to complete the family group, and these shared the spoils of the
season; girls were debauched, in order that they might, as fictitious
widows, move compassion and earn alms. In winter they camped together in
companies; the length and breadth of the country was cursed with a brood
of hedgers, born of adultery and incest, herding together in troops, when
the ties of relationship were as completely lost as in a herd of cattle.
The English clique at the Castle were too much occupied in checking
fancied disaffection and dispensing patronage to secure the support of
hungry partisans, to care for the welfare of the masses. The local gentry,
despised by the governing clique, allowed matters to drift from bad to
worse. The better part of the population left the country in disgust. Such
was the condition of Ireland when Swift stood out as its defender. The
wrongs of Ireland cried to heaven for adjustment.
Since the days of Charles II. the Irish had been forbidden to seek a
market in England for their cattle. Since the last years of William III.
harsh laws crushed out the woollen trade, restricting it to a precarious
market formed by a contraband trade with France, every year getting worse.
Misery wanted only a voice to utter its lamentation. Swift assumed this
function in his "Proposal for the universal use of manufactures,"
published in 1720. Comments on the pamphlets are needless.
The evil of absenteeism was of ancient date and the efforts to eradicate
it still older. By a statute of Richard II., two-thirds of the estate of
an absentee were forfeited to the Crown. The Lancastrian kings pursued the
same policy. Henry VIII. made a strong effort to correct the abuse, by
resuming whole Irish estates of some English nobles who were habitual
absentees. Under the early Stuarts the same course was pursued, but the
evil continues to our own day without any abatement. In Swift's time,
residence had not been encouraged; statutes to enforce it remained on the
statute-book, but they were a dead letter. The landlord drew the rent from
Ireland, without helping to pay the taxes. He spent it in England and
frequently more than the amount, leaving the estates encumbered with
mortgages in the hands of English mortgagees. The holder of an Irish
office thought only of its emoluments, and was indignant at any suggestion
of living in the country burdened with his support, and nominally entitled
to his services. The land was reduced to a state of bankruptcy and
desolation; famine swept through it, and the people were perishing in
thousands. It was at this terrible juncture that Swift put forth in
despair his "Modest Proposal," one of the last efforts of his marvellous
genius, and it shamed the government into taking some steps to redress the
suffering which prevailed.
"Swift's pieces relating to Ireland," says Edmund Burke, "are those of a
public nature, in which the Dean appears, as usual, in the best light,
because they do honour to his heart as well as his head, furnishing some
additional proofs, that though he was very free in his abuse of the
inhabitants of that country, as well natives as foreigners, he had their
interest sincerely at heart, and perfectly understood it. His sermon on
doing good, though peculiarly adapted to Ireland, and Wood's design upon
it, contains perhaps the best motives to Patriotism that was ever
delivered within so small a compass."
There is no need to refer here to the other works of genius that came from
his pen; they are well known. The object of the present writer is to deal
exclusively with what has reference to Ireland, and while exhibiting Swift
as a patriot, no attempt is made to exclude his faults or deny his
imperfections; those faults were redeemed by devoted friendship and noble
generosity.
His friendship with Addison continued till the day of his death, and so
strong was the bond between them, that when the two met for an evening,
they never wished for a third person to support or enliven the
conversation. Of him, Pope said:--"Nothing of you can die; nothing of you
can decay; nothing of you can suffer; nothing of you can be obscured or
locked up from esteem and admiration, except what is at the Deanery. May
the rest of you be as happy hereafter as honest men may expect and need
not doubt, while they know that their Maker is merciful." One can imagine
how dear he was to those friends, when Bolingbroke writes:--"I love you
for a thousand things, for none more than for the just esteem and love
which you have for all the sons of Adam." No one esteemed Swift more than
Lord Carteret, who, when hearing of his illness, wrote:--"That you may
enjoy the continuation of all happiness is my wish. As to futurity I know
your name will be remembered, when the names of Kings, Lord-Lieutenants,
Archbishops, and Parliamentary politicians will be forgotten. At last you
yourself must fall into oblivion, which may be less than one thousand
years, though the term may be uncertain and will depend on the progress
that barbarity and ignorance may make, notwithstanding the sedulous
endeavours of the great Prelates in this and succeeding ages."
The account of Swift thus coming from men of the greatest genius of their
age, carries with it incontestable evidence in his favour, and completely
pulverizes the slanderous accusations heaped on him by his enemies. The
manly tone of his writing penetrated the character of the whole English
colony and bore fruit, long after the proud heart was laid at rest in the
great Irish cathedral. The place is marked by an inscription written by
himself, and touchingly refers to a time when the heart can no longer be
tortured with fierce indignation born from the contemplation of licensed
injustice. The character of Swift has long been vindicated, for animosity
perishes, but humanity is eternal.