National Debt, Proposal to pay off the, 251-258.
Navigation Act, the effect of, in Ireland, 66, 86.
Norton, Richard, 301.
"Orange, the squeezing of the," 275.
Penn, William, 120.
Perron, Cardinal, anecdote of, 238.
Peterborough, Lord, letter of Swift to, April 28, 1726, 154-156.
Phipps, Sir Constantine, 244.
"Pistorides" (Richard Tighe), 233, 235.
Poor, Considerations about maintaining the, 339-342.
Poyning's Law, 103, 105.
Psalmanazar, George, his Description of the Island of Formosa, 211.
Pulteney, William, the "Craftsman" founded by, 219, 375;
"Answer of, to Robert Walpole," 392-400.
Quilca, life at, 74, 75-77.
Rents, raising of, in Ireland, 163.
Roads, in Ireland, condition of the, 130.
Roman Catholics, legislation against, 5;
petty persecution of, in Ireland, 263.
Rowley, Hercules, his pamphlets against
the establishment of a bank in Ireland, 38.
Savoy, Duke of, 277.
Scotland, description of, 97, 98.
Scots in Sweden, 9.
Scottish colonists in Ulster, 104.
Sheridan, Dr. Thomas, 74;
his account of the state of Ireland, 26-30;
given a chaplaincy by Carteret, 232, 241;
anecdote of Carteret, related by, 232;
informed against by Tighe, 233, 242.
Stanley, Sir John, Commissioner of Customs, 197.
Stannard, Eaton, elected Recorder of Dublin, 319, 366.
Stopford, Dr. James, Bishop of Cloyne, 243.
Street cries explained, 268-270, 275-281.
Swan, Mr., 280.
Swandlingbar, origin of the name of, 347.
Swearer's Bank, the, 41.
Swift, Godwin, 347.
Swift, Jonathan, the freedom of the City of Dublin conferred on, 168;
his speech on the occasion, 169-172;
confesses the authorship of the "Drapier's Letters," 171;
born in Dublin, 267;
his opposition to Archbishop Boulter, 353, 354;
his speech on the lowering of the coin, 357;
his efforts in behalf of Mr. Dunkin, 364-368;
receives the freedom of the City of Cork, 367;
appoints Dr. Wynne Sub-dean of St. Patrick's, 370.
Temple, Sir William, his comparison of Holland and Ireland, 164.
Test Act, in Ireland, 2, 5 _et seq._
Thompson, Edward, Commissioner of the Revenue in Ireland, 315.
Tickell, T., 242.
Tighe, Richard, informs against Sheridan, 74, 233, 242;
attacks Carteret, 228;
ridiculed as "Pistorides," 233, 235.
"Traulus" (Lord Allen), 176, 236.
Trees, planting of, in Ireland, 132.
Violante, Madam, 234.
Wallis, Dr., 280.
Walpole, Sir Robert, interview of Swift with, in 1726, 153;
his views on Ireland, 154;
satire on, 276;
his literary assistants, 379, 393 _et seq._;
character of, 384 _et seq._
Waters, Edward, Swift's printer, 171, 193.
Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice, 14, 86, 115, 129, 171, 193, 194.
Wine, proposed tax on, 196, 197.
Wool, Irish, exportation of,
forbidden by law, 17, 18, 110, 111, 157, 158;
effect of the prohibition on England, 160.
Woollen manufactures, Irish people should use their own, 137 _et seq._;
Observations on the case of the, 147-150.
Wynne, Rev. Dr. John, Sub-dean of St. Patrick's, 370.
~FOOTNOTES:~
[1] "Unpublished Letters of Swift," edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, 1899.
[2] Mr. Murray's MSS., quoted by Craik.
[3] It appeared almost impossible for Swift to see the injustice of this
test clause. In reality, it had been the outcome of the legislation
against the Irish Roman Catholics. In 1703 the Irish parliament had
passed a bill by which it was enacted, "that all estates should be
equally divided among the children of Roman Catholics, notwithstanding
any settlements to the contrary, unless the persons to whom they were to
descend, would qualify, by taking the oaths prescribed by government,
and conform to the established church" (Crawford's "History of Ireland,"
1783, vol. ii., p. 256). The bill was transmitted to England, for
approval there, at a time when Anne was asking the Emperor for his
indulgence towards the Protestants of his realms. This placed the Queen
in an awkward position, since she could hardly expect indulgence from a
Roman Catholic monarch towards Protestants when she, a Protestant
monarch, was persecuting Roman Catholics. To obviate this dilemma, the
Queen's ministers added a clause to the bill, "by which all persons in
Ireland were rendered incapable of any employment under the crown, or,
of being magistrates in any city, who, agreeably to the English test
act, did not receive the sacrament as prescribed by the Church of
England" (_ibid._). Under this clause, of course, came all the
Protestant Dissenters, including the Presbyterians "from the north." The
bill so amended passed into law; but its iniquitous influence was a
disgrace to the legislators of the day, and his advocacy of it, however
much he was convinced of its expediency, proves Swift a short-sighted
statesman wherever the enemies of the Church of England were concerned.
[T. S.]
[4] Colonel John Birch (1616-1691) was of Lancashire. Swift calls him
"of Herefordshire," because he had been appointed governor of the city
of Hereford, after he had captured it by a stratagem, in 1654. Devotedly
attached to Presbyterian principles, Birch was a man of shrewd business
abilities and remarkable oratorical gifts. On the restoration of Charles
II., in which he took a prominent part on account of Charles's
championship of Presbyterianism, Birch held important business posts. He
sat in parliament for Leominster and Penrhyn, and his plans for the
rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, though they were not adopted,
were yet such as would have been extremely salutary had they been
accepted. Of his eloquence, Burnet says: "He was the roughest and
boldest speaker in the house, and talked in the language and phrases of
a carrier, but with a beauty and eloquence, that was always acceptable."
The reference to the carrier is purposely made, since Birch did not hide
the fact that he had once pursued that occupation. Swift was twenty-four
years of age when Birch died, so that he must have been a very young man
when he heard Birch make the remark he quotes. [T. S.]
[5] Sir Thomas Littleton (1647?-1710) was chosen Speaker of the English
House of Commons by the junto in 1698. Onslow, in a note to Burnet's
"History," speaks of the good work he did as treasurer of the navy.
Macky describes him as "a stern-looked man, with a brown complexion,
well shaped" (see "Characters"). At the time of Swift's writing the
above letter, Littleton was member for Portsmouth. [T. S.]
[6] Viscount Molesworth, in his "Considerations for promoting the
Agriculture of Ireland" (1723), pointed out, that even with the added
expense of freight, it was cheaper to import corn from England, than to
grow it in Ireland itself. [T. S.]
[7] Mr. Lecky points out that in England, after the Revolution, the
councils were directed by commercial influence. At that time there was
an important woollen industry in England which, it was feared, the
growing Irish woollen manufactures would injure. The English
manufacturers petitioned for their total destruction, and the House of
Lords, in response to the petition, represented to the King that "the
growing manufacture of cloth in Ireland, both by the cheapness of all
sorts of necessaries of life, and goodness of materials for making all
manner of cloth, doth invite your subjects of England, with their
families and servants, to leave their habitations to settle there, to
the increase of the woollen manufacture in Ireland, which makes your
loyal subjects in this kingdom very apprehensive that the further growth
of it may greatly prejudice the said manufacture here." The Commons went
further, and suggested the advisability of discouraging the industry by
hindering the exportation of wool from Ireland to other countries and
limiting it to England alone. The Act of 10 and 11 Will. III. c. 10,
made the suggestion law and even prohibited entirely the exportation of
Irish wool anywhere. Thus, as Swift puts it, "the politic gentlemen of
Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best land, for the feeding
of sheep." See notes to later tracts in this volume on "Observations on
the Woollen Manufactures" and "Letter on the Weavers." [T. S.]
[8] That Swift did not exaggerate may be gathered from the statute
books, and, more immediately, from Hely Hutchinson's "Commercial
Restraints of Ireland" (1779), Arthur Dobbs's "Trade and Improvement of
Ireland," Lecky's "History of Ireland," vols. i. and ii., and Monck
Mason's notes in his "History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," p. 320 _et
seq._ [T. S.]
[9] Barnstaple was, at that time, the chief market in England for Irish
wool. [T. S.]
[10] In 1726, Swift presented some pieces of Irish manufactured silk to
the Princess of Wales and to Mrs. Howard. In sending the silk to Mrs.
Howard he wrote also a letter in which he remarked: "I beg you will not
tell any parliament man from whence you had that plaid; otherwise, out
of malice, they will make a law to cut off all our weavers' fingers."
[T. S.]
[11] This last sentence is as the original edition has it. In Faulkner's
first collected edition and in the fifth volume of the "Miscellanies"
(London, 1735), the following occurs in its place: "I must confess, that
as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and
for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for
them."
Swift knew what he was advising when he suggested that the people of
Ireland should not import their goods from England. He was well aware
that English manufactures were not really necessary. Sir William Petty
had, a half century before, pointed out that a third of the manufactures
then imported into Ireland could be produced by its own factories,
another third could as easily and as cheaply be obtained from countries
other than England, and "consequently, that it was scarce necessary at
all for Ireland to receive any goods of England, and not convenient to
receive above one-fourth part, from thence, of the whole which it
needeth to import" ("Polit. Anatomy of Ireland," 1672). [T. S.]
[12] Faulkner and the "Miscellanies" (London, 1735) print, instead of,
"as any prelate in Christendom," the words, "as if he had not been born
among us." The Archbishop was Dr. William King, with whom Swift had had
much correspondence. See "Letters" in Scott's edition (1824).
Dr. William King, who succeeded Narcissus Marsh as Archbishop of Dublin
in March, 1702-3. Swift had not always been on friendly terms with King,
but, at this time, they were in sympathy as to the wrongs and grievances
of Ireland. King strongly supported the agitation against Wood's
halfpence, but later, when he attempted to interfere with the affairs of
the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Swift and he came to an open rupture. See
also volume on the Drapier's Letters, in this edition. [T. S.]
[13] Faulkner and the "Miscellanies" of 1735 print this amount as "three
thousand six hundred." This was the sum paid by the lord-lieutenant to
the lords-justices, who represented him in the government of Ireland.
The lord-lieutenant himself did not then, as the viceroy of Ireland does
now, take up his residence in the country. Although in receipt of a
large salary, he only came to Dublin to deliver the speeches at the
openings of parliament, or on some other special occasion. [T. S.]
[14] The Dublin edition of this pamphlet has a note stating that Cotter
was a gentleman of Cork who was executed for committing a rape on a
Quaker. [T. S.]
[15] Said to be Colonel Bladon (1680-1746), who translated the
Commentaries of Cæsar. He was a dependant of the Duke of Marlborough, to
whom he dedicated this translation. [T. S.]
[16] Lord Grimston. William Luckyn, first Viscount Grimston (1683-1756),
was created an Irish peer with the title Baron Dunboyne in 1719. The
full title of the play to which Swift refers, is "The Lawyer's Fortune,
or, Love in a Hollow Tree." It was published in 1705. Swift refers to
Grimston in his verses "On Poetry, a Rhapsody." Pope, in one of his
satires, calls him "booby lord." Grimston withdrew his play from
circulation after the second edition, but it was reprinted in Rotterdam
in 1728 and in London in 1736. Dr. Johnson told Chesterfield a story
which made the Duchess of Marlborough responsible for this London
reprint, which had for frontispiece the picture of an ass wearing a
coronet. [T. S.]
[17] The original edition prints "ministers" instead of "chief
governors." [T. S.]
[18] In 1720 Bishop Nicholson of Derry, writing to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, describes the wretched condition of the towns and the
country districts, and the misery of their population:
"Our trade of all kind is at a stand, insomuch as that our most eminent
merchants, who used to pay bills of _1,000l._ at sight, are hardly able
to raise _100l._ in so many days. Spindles of yarn (our daily bread) are
fallen from _2s. 6d._ to _15d._, and everything also in proportion.
Our best beef (as good as I ever ate in England) is sold under _3/4d._ a
pound, and all this not from any extraordinary plenty of commodities,
but from a perfect dearth of money. Never did I behold even in Picardy,
Westphalia, or Scotland, such dismal marks of hunger and want as
appeared in the countenances of most of the poor creatures I met with on
the road." (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 6116, quoted by Lecky.) [T. S.]
[19] The "absentee" landlord was an evil to Ireland on which much has
been written. It was difficult to keep the country in order when the
landed proprietors took so little interest in their possessions as to do
nothing but exact rents from their tenants and spend the money so
obtained in England. Two, and even three, hundred years before Swift's
day "absenteeism" had been the cause of much of the rebellion in Ireland
which harassed the English monarchs, who endeavoured to put a stop to
the evil by confiscating the estates of such landlords. Acts were passed
by Richard II. and Henry VIII. to this effect; but in later times, the
statutes were ignored and not enforced, and the Irish landlord, in
endeavours to obtain for himself social recognition and standing in
England which, because of his Irish origin, were denied him, remained in
England indulging himself in lavish expenditure and display. The
consequences of this were the impoverishment of his estates and their
eventual management by rack-renters. These rack-renters, whose only
interest lay in squeezing money out of the impoverished tenants, became
the bane of the agricultural holder.
Unfortunately, the spirit of "absenteeism" extended itself to the
holders of offices in Ireland, and even the lord-lieutenant rarely took
up his residence in Dublin for any time longer than necessitated by the
immediate demands of his installation and speech-making, although he
drew his emoluments from the Irish revenues. In the "List of Absentees"
instances are given where men appointed to Irish offices would land on
Saturday night, receive the sacrament on Sunday, take the oath in court
on Monday morning, and be on their way back to England by Monday
afternoon.
It has been calculated that out of a total rental of £1,800,000, as much
as 33-1/3 per cent. was sent out of the country. [T. S.]
[20] Sheridan, in the sixth number of "The Intelligencer," contributes
an account of the state of Ireland, written to the text, "O patria! O
divûm domus!"
"When I travel through any part of this unhappy kingdom, and I have now
by several excursions made from Dublin, gone through most counties of
it, it raises two passions in my breast of a different kind; an
indignation against those vile betrayers and insulters of it, who
insinuate themselves into favour, by saying, it is a rich nation; and a
sincere passion for the natives, who are sunk to the lowest degree of
misery and poverty, whose houses are dunghills, whose victuals are the
blood of their cattle, or the herbs in the field; and whose clothing, to
the dishonour of God and man, is nakedness. Yet notwithstanding all the
dismal appearances, it is the common phrase of our upstart race of
people, who have suddenly sprang up like the dragon's teeth among us,
_That Ireland was never known to be so rich as it is now_; by which, as
I apprehend, they can only mean themselves, for they have skipped over
the channel from the vantage ground of a dunghill upon no other merit,
either visible or divineable, than that of not having been born among
us.
"This is the modern way of planting Colonies--Et ubi solitudinem
faciunt, id Imperium vocant. When those who are so unfortunate to be
born here, are excluded from the meanest preferments, and deemed
incapable of being entertained even as common soldiers, whose poor
stipend is but four pence a day. No trade, no emoluments, no
encouragement for learning among the natives, who yet by a perverse
consequence are divided into factions, with as much violence and
rancour, as if they had the wealth of the Indies to contend for. It puts
me in mind of a fable which I read in a monkish author. He quotes for it
one of the Greek mythologists that once upon a time a colony of large
dogs (called the Molossi) transplanted themselves from Epirus to Ætolia,
where they seized those parts of the countries, most fertile in flesh of
all kinds, obliging the native dogs to retire from their best kennels,
to live under ditches and bushes, but to preserve good neighbourhood and
peace; and finding likewise, that the Ætolian dogs might be of some use
in the low offices of life, they passed a decree, that the natives
should be entitled to the short ribs, tops of back, knuckle-bones, and
guts of all the game, which they were obliged by their masters to run
down. This condition was accepted, and what was a little singular, while
the Molossian dogs kept a good understanding among themselves, living in
peace and luxury, these Ætolian curs were perpetually snarling,
growling, barking and tearing at each other's throats: Nay, sometimes
those of the best quality among them, were seen to quarrel with as much
rancour for a rotten gut, as if it had been a fat haunch of venison. But
what need we wonder at this in dogs, when the same is every day
practised among men?
"Last year I travelled from Dublin to Dundalk, through a country
esteemed the most fruitful part of the kingdom, and so nature intended
it. But no ornaments or improvements of such a scene were visible. No
habitation fit for gentlemen, no farmers' houses, few fields of corn,
and almost a bare face of nature, without new plantations of any kind,
only a few miserable cottages, at three or four miles' distance, and one
Church in the centre between this city and Drogheda. When I arrived at
this last town, the first mortifying sight was the ruins of several
churches, battered down by that usurper, Cromwell, whose fanatic zeal
made more desolation in a few days, than the piety of succeeding
prelates or the wealth of the town have, in more than sixty years,
attempted to repair.
"Perhaps the inhabitants, through a high strain of virtue, have, in
imitation of the Athenians, made a solemn resolution, never to rebuild
those sacred edifices, but rather leave them in ruins, as monuments, to
perpetuate the detestable memory of that hellish instrument of
rebellion, desolation, and murder. For the Athenians, when Mardonius had
ravaged a great part of Greece, took a formal oath at the Isthmus, to
lose their lives rather than their liberty, to stand by their leaders to
the last, to spare the cities of such barbarians as they conquered. And
what crowned all, the conclusion of their oath was, We will never repair
any of the Temples, which they have burned and destroyed, lest they may
appear to posterity as so many monuments of these wicked barbarians.
This was a glorious resolution; and I am sorry to think, that the
poverty of my countrymen will not let the world suppose, they have acted
upon such a generous principle; yet upon this occasion I cannot but
observe, that there is a fatality in some nations, to be fond of those
who have treated them with the least humanity. Thus I have often heard
the memory of Cromwell, who has depopulated, and almost wholly destroyed
this miserable country, celebrated like that of a saint, and at the same
time the sufferings of the royal martyr turned into ridicule, and his
murder justified even from the pulpit, and all this done with an intent
to gain favour, under a monarchy; which is a new strain of politics that
I shall not pretend to account for.
"Examine all the eastern towns of Ireland, and you will trace this
horrid instrument of destruction, in defacing of Churches, and
particularly in destroying whatever was ornamental, either within or
without them. We see in the several towns a very few houses scattered
among the ruins of thousands, which he laid level with their streets;
great numbers of castles, the country seats of gentlemen then in being,
still standing in ruin, habitations for bats, daws, and owls, without
the least repairs or succession of other buildings. Nor have the country
churches, as far as my eye could reach, met with any better treatment
from him, nine in ten of them lying among their graves and God only
knows when they are to have a resurrection. When I passed from Dundalk
where this cursed usurper's handy work is yet visible, I cast mine eyes
around from the top of a mountain, from whence I had a wide and a waste
prospect of several venerable ruins. It struck me with a melancholy, not
unlike that expressed by Cicero in one of his letters which being much
upon the like prospect, and concluding with a very necessary reflection
on the uncertainty of things in this world, I shall here insert a
translation of what he says: 'In my return from Asia, as I sailed from
Ægina, towards Megara, I began to take a prospect of the several
countries round me. Behind me was Ægina; before me Megara; on the right
hand the Piræus; and on the left was Corinth; which towns were formerly
in a most flourishing condition; now they lie prostrate and in ruin.
"'Thus I began to think with myself: Shall we who have but a trifling
existence, express any resentment, when one of us either dies a natural
death, or is slain, whose lives are necessarily of a short duration,
when at one view I beheld the carcases of so many great cities?' What if
he had seen the natives of those free republics, reduced to all the
miserable consequences of a conquered people, living without the common
defences against hunger and cold, rather appearing like spectres than
men? I am apt to think, that seeing his fellow creatures in ruin like
this, it would have put him past all patience for philosophic
reflection.