I received a paper from you, whoever 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 for making it cheaper which I cannot approve of.
But pray permit me, before I go farther, 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 measure it as they ought, nor
gave time to any part of the land to recover itself; and when their leases
were near expiring, being assured that their landlords would not renew,
they ploughed even the meadows, and made such havoc, that their landlords
were considerable sufferers by it.
This gave birth to that abominable race of graziers, who, upon expiration
of the farmers' leases, were ready to engross great quantities of land;
and the gentlemen having been often before ill paid, and their land worn
out of heart, were too easily tempted, when a rich grazier made an offer
to take all their land, and give them 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, 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 (farther 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; 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....
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 premium. 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' paper? 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 for 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
awhile 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....
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 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 for 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 meantime, 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.
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 you; 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 has given it, in soil, climate, and situation.