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 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 to 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_. 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), which it
were heartily to be wished that the Parliament would take under their
consideration, such as will no way 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, has 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 the 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 a 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.
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 has 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 the
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 burden 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
accretion, or annual growth of moss, like the other.
Now, the landlords are generally so careless as to 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 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 has 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 suffer such havoc to be made.
All the acts for encouraging plantations of forest-trees are, I am told,
extremely defective; 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 inquiry, 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 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 objection against all this, drawn from the laziness, the
perverseness, or thievish disposition of the poor native Irish, might be
easily answered by showing 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 a horse, I have often seen those two animals 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. 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.
This 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 such 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 has 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 reduces twenty families to one; those
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 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.