but I should rejoice to see a stay-lace from England be thought
scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.
If the unthinking shopkeepers in this town had not been utterly destitute
of common sense, they would have made some proposal to the Parliament,
with a petition to the purpose I have mentioned; promising to improve the
cloths and stuffs of the nation into all possible degrees of fineness and
colours, and engaging not to play the knave, according to their custom, by
exacting and imposing upon the nobility and gentry, either as to the
prices or the goodness.
For I remember, in London, upon a general mourning, the rascally mercers
and woollen-drapers would in twenty-four hours raise their cloths and
silks to above a double price, and if the mourning continued long, then
come whining with petitions to the court, that they were ready to starve,
and their fineries lay upon their hands.
I could wish our shopkeepers would immediately think on this proposal,
addressing it to all persons of quality and others; but, first, be sure to
get somebody who can write sense, to put it into form.
I think it needless to exhort the clergy to follow this good example;
because, in a little time, those among them who are so unfortunate as to
have had their birth and education in this country, will think themselves
abundantly happy when they can afford Irish crape, and an Athlone hat; and
as to the others, I shall not presume to direct them. I have, indeed, seen
the present Archbishop of Dublin clad from head to foot in our own
manufacture; and yet, under the rose be it spoken, his Grace deserves as
good a gown as if he had not been born among us.
I have not courage enough to offer one syllable on this subject to their
honours of the army; neither have I sufficiently considered the great
importance of scarlet and gold lace.
The fable in Ovid of Arachne and Pallas is to this purpose.--The goddess
had heard of one Arachne, a young virgin, very famous for spinning and
weaving. They both met upon a trial of skill; and Pallas, finding herself
almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and envy, knocked her
rival down, and turned her into a spider; enjoining her to spin and weave
for ever out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass.
I confess, that, from a boy, I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never
heartily love the goddess, on account of so cruel and unjust a sentence;
which, however, is fully executed upon us by England, with farther
additions of rigour and severity; for the greatest part of our bowels and
vitals is extracted, without allowing us the liberty of spinning and
weaving them.
The Scripture tells us, that "oppression makes a wise man mad;" therefore,
consequently speaking, the reason why some men are not mad is because they
are not wise. However it were to be wished, that oppression would in time
teach a little wisdom to fools.
I was much delighted with a person, who has a great estate in this
kingdom, upon his complaints to me, how grievously poor England suffers by
impositions from Ireland:--That we convey our wool to France, in spite of
all the harpies at the custom-house; that Mr. Shuttleworth and others, on
the Cheshire coast, are such fools to sell us their bark at a good price
for tanning our own hides into leather; with other enormities of the like
weight and kind. To which I will venture to add more:--That the mayoralty
of this city is always executed by an inhabitant, and often by a native,
which might as well be done by a deputy with a moderate salary, whereby
poor England loses at least one thousand pounds a-year upon the balance;
that the governing of this kingdom costs the Lord-Lieutenant three
thousand six hundred pounds a year--so much net loss to poor England; that
the people of Ireland presume to dig for coals on their own grounds; and
the farmers in the county of Wicklow send their turf to the very market
of Dublin, to the great discouragement of the coal trade of Mostyn and
Whitehaven; that the revenues of the post-office here, so righteously
belonging to the English treasury, as arising chiefly from our commerce
with each other, should be remitted to London clogged with that grievous
burden of exchange; and the pensions paid out of the Irish revenues to
English favourites, should lie under the same disadvantage, to the great
loss of the grantees. When a divine is sent over to a bishopric here, with
the hopes of five-and-twenty hundred pounds a year, and, upon his arrival,
he finds, alas! a dreadful discount of ten or twelve per cent.; a judge,
or a commissioner of the revenue, has the same cause of complaint....
These are a few among the many hardships we put upon that poor kingdom of
England, for which, I am confident, every honest man wishes a remedy. And
I hear there is a project on foot for transporting our best wheaten straw,
by sea and land carriage, to Dunstable, and obliging us, by a law, to take
off yearly so many ton of straw hats, for the use of our women; which will
be a great encouragement to the manufacture of that industrious town.
I should be glad to learn among the divines, whether a law to bind men
without their own consent be obligatory _in foro conscientiae_; because I
find Scripture, Sanderson, and Suarez, are wholly silent on the matter.
The oracle of reason, the great law of nature, and general opinion of
civilians, wherever they treat of limited governments, are indeed decisive
enough.
It is wonderful to observe the bias among our people in favour of things,
persons, and wares of all kinds, that come from England. The printer tells
his hawkers, that he has got an excellent new song just brought from
London. I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and, upon hearing a
coxcomb from thence displaying himself, with great volubility, upon the
park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget
in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments. It is not
many years since I remember a person, who, by his style and literature,
seems to have been the corrector of a hedge-press in some blind alley
about Little Britain, proceed gradually to be an author, at least a
translator of a lower rate, although somewhat of a larger bulk, than any
that now flourishes in Grub Street; and, upon the strength of this
foundation, come over here, erect himself up into an orator and
politician, and lead a kingdom after him. This, I am told, was the very
motive that prevailed on the author of a play, called "Love in a Hollow
Tree," to do us the honour of a visit; presuming, with very good reason,
that he was a writer of a superior class. I know another, who, for thirty
years past, has been the common standard of stupidity in England, where he
was never heard a minute in any assembly, or by any party, with common
Christian treatment; yet, upon his arrival here, could put on a face of
importance and authority, talk more than six, without either gracefulness,
propriety, or meaning, and, at the same time, be admired and followed as
the pattern of eloquence and wisdom.
* * * * *
I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords; who, by
immeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have
already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the
peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the
whole species of what we call substantial farmers, will, in a very few
years, be utterly at an end. It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen
labouring, with all their might, for preventing the bishops from letting
their revenues at a moderate half value (whereby the whole order would, in
an age, have been reduced to manifest beggary), at the very instant when
they were everywhere canting[41] their own land upon short leases, and
sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance.... I have
heard great divines affirm, that nothing is so likely to call down a
universal judgment from Heaven upon a nation as universal oppression; and
whether this be not already verified in part, their worships the
landlords, are now at full leisure to consider. Whoever travels this
country, and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and
dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law,
religion, or common humanity is professed. I cannot forbear saying one
word upon a thing they call a bank, which, I fear, is projecting in this
town.[42] I never saw the proposals, nor understood any one particular of
their scheme. What I wish for at present, is only a sufficient provision
of hemp, and caps and bells, to distribute according to the several
degrees of honesty and prudence in some persons. I hear only of a
monstrous sum already named; and if others do not soon hear of it too, and
hear with a vengeance, then I am a gentleman of less sagacity than myself,
and very few beside myself, take me to be. And the jest will be still the
better if it be true, as judicious persons have assured me, that one half
of this money will be real, and the other half altogether imaginary. The
matter will be likewise much mended, if the merchants continue to carry
off our gold, and our goldsmiths to melt down our heavy silver.