kingdom, which doth not manifestly shew 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
necessities, conveniences, or even comforts of life, are denied us by
nature, or not to be attained by labour and industry! Are those
detestable extravagancies of Flanders lace, English cloths of our own
wool, and other goods, Italian or Indian silks, tea, coffee, chocolate,
china-ware, 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,[93] 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 revenue 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!
If I am possessed of an hundred pounds a year, and by some misfortune it
sinks to fifty, without a possibility of ever being retrieved; does it
remain a question, in such an exigency, what I am to do? Must not I
retrench one-half in every article of expense, or retire to some cheap,
distant part of the country, where necessaries are at half value?
Is there any mortal who can shew 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, in the manner I have already
prescribed?
I am tired with letters from many unreasonable, well-meaning people, who
are daily pressing me to deliver my thoughts in this deplorable
juncture, which, upon many others, I have so often done in vain. What
will it import, that half a score people in a coffee-house may happen to
read this paper, and even the majority of those few differ in every
sentiment from me? If the farmer be not allowed to sow his corn; if half
the little money among us be sent to pay rents to Irish absentees, and
the rest for foreign luxury and dress for the women, what will our
charitable dispositions avail, when there is nothing left to be given?
When, contrary to all custom and example, all necessaries of life are so
exorbitant; when money of all kinds was never known to be so scarce, so
that gentlemen of no contemptible estates are forced to retrench in
every article, (except what relates to their wives,) without being able
to shew any bounty to the poor?
AN ANSWER
TO SEVERAL LETTERS SENT ME FROM
UNKNOWN HANDS.[94]
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1729.
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 the 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 into 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_.[95] 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,[96]) which
it were heartily to be wished that the Parliament would take under
their consideration, such as will nowise 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, hath 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 this 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 an
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.[97]
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 hath 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 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 burthen 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 an
accretion, or annual growth of moss, like the other.
Now, the landlords are generally too careless that they 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 a 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 hath 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 to suffer such havoc to be made.
All the acts for encouraging plantations of forest-trees are, I am told,
extremely defective;[98] 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 enquiry, 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 all tenants and 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 objections against all this, drawn from the laziness, the
perverseness, or thievish disposition, of the poor native Irish, might
be easily answered, by shewing 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 horse, I have often seen those two
animals to be 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.[99] 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. The 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 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 hath
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 reduceth twenty families to
one: these 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 part 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.
A LETTER
TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN,
CONCERNING THE WEAVERS.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1729.
NOTE.
The archbishop to whom Swift wrote was Dr. William King, for many
years his friend. King was a fine patriot and had stood out
strongly against the imposition of Wood's Halfpence. In this
letter, so characteristic of Swift's attitude towards the condition
of Ireland, he aims at a practical and immediate relief. The causes
for this condition discussed so ably by Molesworth, Prior and Dobbs
in their various treatises are too academic for him. His "Proposal
for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture" well illustrates the
kind of practical reform Swift insisted on. Yet the insistence was
more because of the spirit of independence such a course demanded.
To Swift there was no hope for Ireland without a radical change in
the spirit of its people. The change meant the assertion of
manliness, independence, and strength of character. How to attain
these, and how to make the people aware of their power, were always
Swift's aims. All his tracts are assertions of and dilations on
these themes. If the people were but to insist on wearing their own
manufactures, since they were prohibited from exporting them, they
would keep their money in the kingdom. Likewise, if they were to
deny themselves the indulgence in luxuries, they would not have to
send out their money to the countries from which these luxuries
were obtained. There were methods ready at hand, but the practice
in them would result in the cultivation of that respect for
themselves without which a nation is worse than a pauper and lower
than a slave.
* * * * *
The text of this edition is based on the original manuscript, and
collated with that of Scott's second edition of Swift's collected
works.
[T. S.]
A LETTER TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, CONCERNING THE WEAVERS.
MY LORD,
The corporation of weavers in the woollen manufacture, who have so often
attended your Grace, and called upon me with their schemes and proposals
were with me on Thursday last, when he who spoke for the rest and in the
name of his absent brethren, said, "It was the opinion of the whole
body, that if somewhat were written at this time by an able hand to
persuade the people of the Kingdom to wear their own woollen
manufactures, it might be of good use to the Nation in general, and
preserve many hundreds of their trade from starving." To which I
answered, "That it was hard for any man of common spirit to turn his
thoughts to such speculations, without discovering a resentment which
people are too delicate to bear." For, I will not deny to your Grace,
that I cannot reflect on the singular condition of this Country,
different from all others upon the face of the Earth, without some
emotion, and without often examining as I pass the streets whether those
animals which come in my way with two legs and human faces, clad and
erect, be of the same species with what I have seen very like them in
England, as to the outward shape, but differing in their notions,
natures, and intellectuals, more than any two kinds of brutes in a
forest, which any men of common prudence would immediately discover, by
persuading them to define what they mean by law, liberty, property,
courage, reason, loyalty or religion.
One thing, my Lord, I am very confident of; that if God Almighty for
our sins would most justly send us a pestilence, whoever should dare to
discover his grief in public for such a visitation, would certainly be
censured for disaffection to the Government. For I solemnly profess,
that I do not know one calamity we have undergone this many years,
whereof any man whose opinions were not in fashion dared to lament
without being openly charged with that imputation. And this is the
harder, because although a mother when she hath corrected her child may
sometimes force it to kiss the rod, yet she will never give that power
to the footboy or the scullion.
My Lord, there are two things for the people of this Kingdom to
consider. First their present evil condition; and secondly what can be
done in some degree to remedy it.
I shall not enter into a particular description of our present misery;
It hath been already done in several papers, and very fully in one,
entitled, "A short View of the State of Ireland." It will be enough to
mention the entire want of trade, the Navigation Act executed with the
utmost rigour, the remission of a million every year to England, the
ruinous importation of foreign luxury and vanity, the oppression of
landlords, and discouragement of agriculture.
Now all these evils are without the possibility of a cure except that of
importations, and to fence against ruinous folly will be always in our
power in spite of the discouragements, mortifications, contempt, hatred,
and oppression we can lie under. But our trade will never mend, the
Navigation Act never be softened, our absentees never return, our
endless foreign payments never be lessened, or our landlords ever be
less exacting.
All other schemes for preserving this Kingdom from utter ruin are idle
and visionary, consequently drawn from wrong reasoning, and from general
topics which for the same causes that they may be true in all Nations
are certainly false in ours; as I have told the Public often enough, but
with as little effect as what I shall say at present is likely to
produce.
I am weary of so many abortive projects for the advancement of trade, of
so many crude proposals in letters sent me from unknown hands, of so
many contradictory speculations about raising or sinking the value of
gold and silver: I am not in the least sorry to hear of the great
numbers going to America, though very much so for the causes that drive
them from us, since the uncontrolled maxim, "That people are the riches
of a Nation," is no maxim here under our circumstances. We have neither
[manufactures] to employ them about, nor food to support them.
If a private gentleman's income be sunk irretrievably for ever from a
hundred pounds to fifty, and that he hath no other method to supply the
deficiency, I desire to know, my Lord, whether such a person hath any
other course to take than to sink half his expenses in every article of
economy, to save himself from ruin and the gaol. Is not this more than
doubly the case of Ireland, where the want of money, the irrecoverable
ruin of trade, with the other evils above mentioned, and many more too
well known and felt, and too numerous or invidious to relate, have been
gradually sinking us for above a dozen years past, to a degree that we
are at least by two thirds in a worse condition than was ever known
since the Revolution? Therefore instead of dreams and projects for the
advancing of trade, we have nothing left but to find out some expedient
whereby we may reduce our expenses to our incomes.
Yet this procedure, allowed so necessary in all private families, and in
its own nature so easy to be put in practice, may meet with strong
opposition by the cowardly slavish indulgence of the men to the
intolerable pride arrogance vanity and luxury of the women, who strictly
adhering to the rules of modern education seem to employ their whole
stock of invention in contriving new arts of profusion, faster than the
most parsimonious husband can afford; and to compass this work the more
effectually, their universal maxim is to despise and detest everything
of the growth and manufacture of their own country, and most to value
whatever comes from the very remotest parts of the globe. And I am
convinced, that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon,
with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what came
directly from thence.[100]
The prime cost of wine yearly imported to Ireland is valued at thirty
thousand pounds, and the tea (including coffee and chocolate) at five
times that sum. The lace, silks, calicoes, and all other unnecessary
ornaments for women, including English cloths and stuffs, added to the
former articles, make up (to compute grossly), about four hundred
thousand pounds.
Now, if we should allow the thirty thousand pounds for wine, wherein the
women have their share, and which is all we have to comfort us, and
deduct seventy thousand pounds more for over-reckoning, there would
still remain three hundred thousand pounds, annually spent for
unwholesome drugs, and unnecessary finery. Which prodigious sum would be
wholly saved, and many thousands of our miserable shopkeepers and
manufacturers comfortably supported.
Let speculative people busy their brains as much as they please, there
is no other way to prevent this Kingdom from sinking for ever than by
utterly renouncing all foreign dress and luxury.
It is absolutely so in fact that every husband of any fortune in the
Kingdom is nourishing a poisonous, devouring serpent in his bosom with
all the mischief but with none of its wisdom.
If all the women were clad with the growth of their own Country, they
might still vie with each other in the cause of foppery, and still have
room left to vie with each other, and equally shew their wit and
judgment in deciding upon the variety of Irish stuffs; And if they could
be contented with their native wholesome slops for breakfast, we should
hear no more of their spleen, hysterics, colics, palpitations, and
asthmas. They might still be allowed to ruin each other and their
husbands at play, because the money lost would only circulate among
ourselves.
My Lord; I freely own it a wild imagination that any words will cure the
sottishness of men, or the vanity of women, but the Kingdom is in a fair
way of producing the most effectual remedy, when there will not be money
left for the common course of buying and selling the very necessaries of
life in our markets, unless we absolutely change the whole method of our
proceedings.