GENTLEMEN,--

I am inclined to think that I received a letter from you two, last summer,

directed to Dublin, while I was in the country, whither it was sent me;

and I ordered an answer to it to be printed, but it seems it had little

effect, and I suppose this will not have much more. But the heart of this

people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes

they have closed. And, gentlemen, I am to tell you another thing: that the

world is too regardless of what we write for public good; that after we

have delivered our thoughts, without any prospect of advantage, or of

reputation, which latter is not to be had but by subscribing our names, we

cannot prevail upon a printer to be at the charge of sending it into the

world unless we will be at all or half the expense; and although we are

willing enough to bestow our labours, we think it unreasonable to be out

of pocket; because it probably may not consist with the situation of our

affairs.

I do very much approve your good intentions, and in a great measure your

manner of declaring them; and I do imagine you intended that the world

should not only know your sentiments, but my answer, which I shall

impartially give.... Although your letter be directed to me, yet I take

myself to be only an imaginary person; for, although I conjecture I had

formerly one from you, yet I never answered it otherwise than in print;

neither was I at a loss to know the reasons why so many people of this

kingdom were transporting themselves to America.

And if this encouragement were owing to a pamphlet written, giving an

account of the country of Pennsylvania, to tempt people to go thither, I

do declare that those who were tempted, by such a narrative, to such a

journey, were fools, and the author a most impudent knave; at least, if it

be the same pamphlet I saw when it first came out, which is about

twenty-five years ago, dedicated to William Penn (whom by a mistake you

call "Sir William Penn,") and styling him, by authority of the Scripture,

"Most noble Governor." For I was very well acquainted with Penn, and did,

some years after, talk with him upon that pamphlet, and the impudence of

the author, who spoke so many things in praise of the soil and climate,

which Penn himself did absolutely contradict. For he did assure me, "That

this country wanted the shelter of mountains, which left it open to the

northern winds from Hudson's Bay and the Frozen Sea, which destroyed all

plantations of trees, and was even pernicious to all common vegetables."

But, indeed, New York, Virginia, and other parts less northward, or more

defended by mountains, are described as excellent countries; but upon what

conditions of advantage foreigners go thither, I am yet to seek. What

evils our people avoid by running from hence, is easier to be determined.

They conceive themselves to live under the tyranny of most cruel exacting

landlords, who have no views farther than increasing their rent-rolls.

Secondly, you complain of the want of trade, whereof you seem not to know

the reason. Thirdly, you lament most justly the money spent by absentees

in England. Fourthly, you complain that your linen manufacture declines.

Fifthly, that your tithe collectors oppress you. Sixthly, that your

children have no hopes of preferment in the church, the revenue, or the

army; to which you might have added the law, and all civil employments

whatsoever. Seventhly, you are undone for want of silver, and want all

other money.

I could easily add some other motives, which, to men of spirit, who desire

and expect, and think they deserve the common privileges of human nature,

would be of more force, than any you have yet named, to drive them out of

this kingdom. But as these speculations may probably not much affect the

brains of your people, I shall choose to let them pass unmentioned.... I

must confess to you both, that if one reason of your people's deserting us

be the despair of things growing better in their own country, I have not

one syllable to answer; because that would be to hope for what is

impossible, and so I have been telling the public these ten years. For

there are events which must precede any such blessing; first, a liberty of

trade; secondly, a share of preferments in all kinds, equal to the British

natives; and thirdly, a return of those absentees, who take almost one

half of the kingdom's revenue. As to the first and second, there is

nothing left us but despair; and for the third, it will never happen till

the kingdom has no money to send them; for which, in my own particular, I

shall not be sorry. The exactions of landlords has indeed been a

grievance of above twenty years' standing. But as to what you object about

the severe clauses relating to the improvement, the fault lies wholly on

the other side; for the landlords, either by their ignorance, or

greediness of making large rent-rolls, have performed this matter so ill,

as we see by experience, that there is not one tenant in five hundred who

has made any improvement worth mentioning: for which I appeal to any man

who rides through the kingdom, where little is to be found among the

tenants but beggary and desolation; the cabins of the Scotch themselves,

in Ulster, being as dirty and miserable as those of the wildest Irish.

Whereas good firm penal laws for improvement, with a tolerable easy rent,

and a reasonable period of time, would, in twenty years, have increased

the rents of Ireland at least a third part of the intrinsic value. I am

glad to hear you speak with some decency of the clergy, and to impute the

exactions you lament to the managers or farmers of the tithes. But you

entirely mistake the fact; for I defy the most wicked and most powerful

clergyman in the kingdom to oppress the meanest farmer in the parish; and

I defy the same clergyman to prevent himself from being cheated by the

same farmer, whenever that farmer shall be disposed to be knavish or

peevish.

For, although the Ulster tithing-teller is more advantageous to the clergy

than any other in the kingdom, yet the minister can demand no more than

his tenth; and where the corn much exceeds the small tithes, as, except in

some districts, I am told it always does, he is at the mercy of every

stubborn farmer, especially of those whose sect as well as interest

incline them to opposition. However, I take it that your people bent for

America do not show the best side of their prudence in making this one

part of their complaint; yet they are so far wise, as not to make the

payment of tithes a scruple of conscience, which is too gross for any

Protestant dissenter, except a Quaker, to pretend. But do your people

indeed think, that if tithes were abolished, or delivered into the hands

of the landlord, after the blessed manner in the Scotch spiritual economy,

the tenant would sit easier in his rent under the same person, who must be

lord of the soil and of the tithe together?

I am ready enough to grant, that the oppression of landlords, the utter

ruin of trade, with its necessary consequences, the want of money, half

the revenues of the kingdom spent abroad, the continued dearth of three

years, and the strong delusion in your people by false allurement from

America, may be the chief motives of their eagerness after such an

expedition. But there is likewise another temptation, which is not of

inconsiderable weight; which is their itch of living in a country where

their sect is predominant, and where their eyes and consciences will not

be offended by the stumbling block of ceremonies, habits, and spiritual

titles. But I was surprised to find that those calamities, whereof we are

innocent, have been sufficient to drive many families out of their

country, who had no reason to complain of oppressive landlords. For, while

I was last year in the northern parts, a person of quality, whose estate

was let above twenty years ago, and then at a very reasonable rent, some

for leases of lives, and some perpetuities, did, in a few months, purchase

eleven of those leases at a very inconsiderable price, although they were,

two years ago, reckoned to pay but half value; whence it is manifest that

our present miserable condition, and the dismal prospect of worse, with

other reasons above assigned, are sufficient to put men upon trying this

desperate experiment of changing the scene they are in, although landlords

should, by a miracle, become less inhuman.

There is hardly a scheme proposed for improving the trade of this kingdom,

which does not manifestly show the stupidity and ignorance of the

proposer, and I laugh with contempt at those weak wise heads, who proceed

upon general maxims, or advise us to follow the examples of Holland and

England. These empirics talk by rote, without understanding the

constitution of the kingdom: as if a physician, knowing that exercise

contributed much to health, should prescribe to his patient under a severe

fit of the gout, to walk ten miles every morning. The directions for

Ireland are very short and plain: to encourage agriculture and home

consumption, and utterly discard all importations which are not absolutely

necessary for health or life. And how few necessaries, conveniences, or

even comforts of life, are denied us by nature, or not to be attained by

labour and industry! Are those detestable extravagances of Flanders lace,

English cloths made of our own wool, and other goods, Italian or Indian

silks, tea, coffee, chocolate, chinaware, and that profusion of wines, by

the knavery of merchants growing dearer every season, with a hundred

unnecessary fopperies, better known to others than me, are these, I say,

fit for us, any more than for the beggar who could not eat his veal

without oranges?

Is it not the highest indignity to human nature, that men should be such

poltroons as to suffer the kingdom and themselves to be undone by the

vanity, the folly, the pride, and wantonness of their wives, who, under

their present corruptions, seem to be a kind of animal, suffered, for our

sins, to be sent into the world for the destruction of families,

societies, and kingdoms, and whose whole study seems directed to be as

expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who,

by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to their

health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings grow

fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of sloth and

luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep beyond noon,

revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenues of a moderate family to

adorn a nauseous, unwholesome, living carcase? Let those few who are not

concerned in any part of this accusation, suppose it unsaid; let the rest

take it among them. Gracious God, in His mercy, look down upon a nation so

shamefully besotted!...

Is there any mortal who can show me, under the circumstances we stand with

our neighbours, under their inclinations towards us, under laws never to

be repealed, under the desolation caused by absentees, under many other

circumstances not to be mentioned, that this kingdom can ever be a nation

of trade, or subsist by any other method than that of a reduced family, by

the utmost parsimony?...