WOOD'S HALFPENCE.
In one of Scott's finest novels, the old Cameronian preacher, who had been
left for dead by Claverhouse's troopers, suddenly rises to confront his
conquerors, and spends his last breath in denouncing the oppressors of the
saints. Even such an apparition was Jonathan Swift to comfortable Whigs
who were flourishing in the place of Harley and St. John, when, after ten
years' quiescence, he suddenly stepped into the political arena. After the
first crushing fall he had abandoned partial hope, and contented himself
with establishing supremacy in his chapter. But undying wrath smouldered
in his breast till time came for an outburst.
No man had ever learnt more thoroughly the lesson, "put not your faith in
princes;" or had been impressed with a lower estimate of the wisdom
displayed by the rulers of the world. He had been behind the scenes, and
knew that the wisdom of great ministers meant just enough cunning to court
the ruin which a little common sense would have avoided. Corruption was at
the prow and folly at the helm. The selfish ring which he had denounced so
fiercely had triumphed. It had triumphed, as he held, by flattering the
new dynasty, hoodwinking the nation, and maligning its antagonists. The
cynical theory of politics was not for him, as for some comfortable
cynics, an abstract proposition, which mattered very little to a sensible
man; but was embodied in the bitter wrath with which he regarded his
triumphant adversaries. Pessimism is perfectly compatible with bland
enjoyment of the good things in a bad world; but Swift's pessimism was not
of this type. It meant energetic hatred of definite things and people who
were always before him.
With this feeling, he had come to Ireland; and Ireland--I am speaking of a
century and a half ago--was the opprobrium of English statesmanship. There
Swift had (or thought he had) always before him a concrete example of the
basest form of tyranny. By Ireland, I have said, Swift meant, in the first
place, the English in Ireland. In the last years of his sanity he
protested indignantly against the confusion between the "savage old
Irish," and the English gentry who, he said, were much better bred, spoke
better English, and were more civilized than the inhabitants of many
English counties.[58] He retained to the end of his life his antipathy to
the Scotch colonists. He opposed their demand for political equality as
fiercely in the last as in his first political utterances. He contrasted
them unfavourably[59] with the Catholics, who had indeed been driven to
revolt by massacre and confiscation under Puritan rule, but who were now,
he declared, "true Whigs, in the best and most proper sense of the word,"
and thoroughly loyal to the house of Hanover. Had there been a danger of a
Catholic revolt, Swift's feelings might have been different; but he always
held, that they were "as inconsiderable as the women and children," mere
"hewers of wood and drawers of water," "out of all capacity of doing any
mischief, if they were ever so well inclined."[60] Looking at them in this
way, he felt a sincere compassion for their misery and a bitter resentment
against their oppressors. The English, he said, in a remarkable
letter,[61] should be ashamed of their reproaches of Irish dulness,
ignorance and cowardice. Those defects were the products of slavery. He
declared that the poor cottagers had "a much better natural taste for good
sense, humour and raillery, than ever I observed among people of the like
sort in England. But the millions of oppressions they lie under, the
tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their priests, and the
misery of the whole nation have been enough to damp the best spirits under
the sun." Such a view is now commonplace enough. It was then a heresy to
English statesmen, who thought that nobody but a Papist or a Jacobite
could object to the tyranny of Whigs.
Swift's diagnosis of the chronic Irish disease was thoroughly political.
He considered that Irish misery sprang from the subjection to a government
not intentionally cruel, but absolutely selfish; to which the Irish
revenue meant so much convenient political plunder, and which acted on the
principle quoted from Cowley, that the happiness of Ireland should not
weigh against the "least conveniency" of England. He summed up his views
in a remarkable letter,[62] to be presently mentioned, the substance of
which had been orally communicated to Walpole. He said to Walpole, as he
said in every published utterance:--first, that the colonists were still
Englishmen and entitled to English rights; secondly, that their trade was
deliberately crushed, purely for the benefit of the English of England;
thirdly, that all valuable preferments were bestowed upon men born in
England, as a matter of course; and finally, that in consequence of this,
the upper classes, deprived of all other openings, were forced to
rack-rent their tenants to such a degree that not one farmer in the
kingdom out of a hundred "could afford shoes or stockings to his children,
or to eat flesh or drink anything better than sour milk and water twice in
a year: so that the whole country, except the Scotch plantation in the
north, is a scene of misery and desolation hardly to be matched on this
side Lapland." A modern reformer would give the first and chief place to
this social misery. It is characteristic that Swift comes to it as a
consequence from the injustice to his own class:--as, again, that he
appeals to Walpole not on the simple ground that the people are wretched,
but on the ground that they will be soon unable to pay the tribute to
England, which he reckons at a million a year. But his conclusion might be
accepted by any Irish patriot. Whatever, he says, can make a country poor
and despicable, concurs in the case of Ireland. The nation is controlled
by laws to which it does not consent; disowned by its brethren and
countrymen; refused the liberty of trading even in its natural
commodities; forced to seek for justice many hundred miles by sea and
land; rendered in a manner incapable of serving the king and country in
any place of honour, trust, or profit; whilst the governors have no
sympathy with the governed, except what may occasionally arise from the
sense of justice and philanthropy.
I am not to ask how far Swift was right in his judgments. Every line which
he wrote shows that he was thoroughly sincere and profoundly stirred by
his convictions. A remarkable pamphlet, published in 1720, contained his
first utterance upon the subject. It is an exhortation to the Irish to use
only Irish manufactures. He applies to Ireland the fable of _Arachne and
Pallas_. The goddess, indignant at being equalled in spinning, turned her
rival into a spider, to spin for ever out of her own bowels in a narrow
compass. He always, he says, pitied poor Arachne for so cruel and unjust a
sentence, "which, however, is fully executed upon us by England with
further 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." Swift of course accepts the economic fallacy
equally taken for granted by his opponents, and fails to see that England
and Ireland injured themselves as well as each other by refusing to
interchange their productions. But he utters forcibly his righteous
indignation against the contemptuous injustice of the English rulers, in
consequence of which the "miserable people" are being reduced "to a worse
condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and
Poland." Slaves, he says, have a natural disposition to be tyrants; and he
himself, when his betters give him a kick, is apt to revenge it with six
upon his footman. That is how the landlords treat their tenantry.
The printer of this pamphlet was prosecuted. The chief justice (Whitshed)
sent back the jury nine times and kept them eleven hours before they would
consent to bring in a "special verdict." The unpopularity of the
prosecution became so great that it was at last dropped. Four years
afterwards a more violent agitation broke out. A patent had been given to
a certain William Wood for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Many
complaints had been made, and in September, 1723, addresses were voted by
the Irish Houses of Parliament, declaring that the patent had been
obtained by clandestine and false representations: that it was mischievous
to the country: and that Wood had been guilty of frauds in his coinage.
They were pacified by vague promises; but Walpole went on with the scheme
on the strength of a favourable report of a committee of the Privy
Council; and the excitement was already serious when (in 1724) Swift
published the _Drapier's Letters_, which give him his chief title to
eminence as a patriotic agitator.
Swift either shared or took advantage of the general belief that the
mysteries of the currency are unfathomable to the human intelligence. They
have to do with that world of financial magic in which wealth may be made
out of paper, and all ordinary relations of cause and effect are
suspended. There is, however, no real mystery about the halfpence. The
small coins which do not form part of the legal tender may be considered
primarily as counters. A penny is a penny, so long as twelve are change
for a shilling. It is not in the least necessary for this purpose that the
copper contained in the twelve penny pieces should be worth or nearly
worth a shilling. A sovereign can never be worth much more than the gold
of which it is made. But at the present day bronze worth only twopence is
coined into twelve penny pieces.[63] The coined bronze is worth six times
as much as the uncoined. The small coins must have some intrinsic value to
deter forgery, and must be made of good materials to stand wear and tear.
If these conditions be observed, and a proper number be issued, the value
of the penny will be no more affected by the value of the copper than the
value of the banknote by that of the paper on which it is written. This
opinion assumes that the copper coins cannot be offered or demanded in
payment of any but trifling debts. The halfpence coined by Wood seem to
have fulfilled these conditions, and as copper worth twopence (on the
lowest computation) was coined into ten halfpence, worth fivepence, their
intrinsic value was more than double that of modern halfpence.
The halfpence, then, were not objectionable upon this ground. Nay, it
would have been wasteful to make them more valuable. It would have been as
foolish to use more copper for the pence as to make the works of a watch
of gold if brass is equally durable and convenient. But another
consequence is equally clear. The effect of Wood's patent was that a mass
of copper worth about 60,000_l._,[64] became worth 100,800_l._ in the
shape of halfpenny pieces. There was therefore a balance of about
40,000_l._ to pay for the expenses of coinage. It would have been waste to
get rid of this by putting more copper in the coins; but if so large a
profit arose from the transaction, it would go to somebody. At the present
day it would be brought into the national treasury. This was not the way
in which business was done in Ireland. Wood was to pay 1000_l._ a year for
fourteen years to the Crown.[65] But 14,000_l._ still leaves a large
margin for profit. What was to become of it? According to the admiring
biographer of Sir R. Walpole, the patent had been originally given by
Lord Sunderland to the Duchess of Kendal, a lady whom the king delighted
to honour. She already received 3000_l._ a year in pensions upon the Irish
establishment, and she sold this patent to Wood for 10,000_l._ Enough was
still left to give Wood a handsome profit; as in transactions of this
kind, every accomplice in a dirty business expects to be well paid. So
handsome, indeed, was the profit that Wood received ultimately a pension
of 3000_l._ for eight years, 24,000_l._, that is, in consideration of
abandoning the patent. It was right and proper that a profit should be
made on the transaction, but shameful that it should be divided between
the king's mistress and William Wood, and that the bargain should be
struck without consulting the Irish representatives, and maintained in
spite of their protests. The Duchess of Kendal was to be allowed to take a
share of the wretched halfpence in the pocket of every Irish beggar. A
more disgraceful transaction could hardly be imagined, or one more
calculated to justify Swift's view of the selfishness and corruption of
the English rulers.
Swift saw his chance, and went to work in characteristic fashion, with
unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by the keenest strategical
instinct. He struck at the heart as vigorously as he had done in the
_Examiner_, but with resentment sharpened by ten years of exile. It was
not safe to speak of the Duchess of Kendal's share in the transaction,
though the story, as poor Archdeacon Coxe pathetically declares, was
industriously propagated. But the case against Wood was all the stronger.
Is he so wicked, asks Swift, as to suppose that a nation is to be ruined
that he may gain three or fourscore thousand pounds? Hampden went to
prison, he says, rather than pay a few shillings wrongfully; I, says
Swift, would rather be hanged than have all my "property taxed at
seventeen shillings in the pound at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the
venerable Mr. Wood." A simple constitutional precedent might rouse a
Hampden; but to stir a popular agitation, it is as well to show that the
evil actually inflicted is gigantic, independently of possible results. It
requires, indeed, some audacity to prove that debasement of the copper
currency can amount to a tax of seventeen shillings in the pound on all
property. Here, however, Swift might simply throw the reins upon the neck
of his fancy. Anybody may make any inferences he pleases in the mysterious
regions of currency; and no inferences, it seems, were too audacious for
his hearers, though we are left to doubt how far Swift's wrath had
generated delusions in his own mind, and how far he perceived that other
minds were ready to be deluded. He revels in prophesying the most
extravagant consequences. The country will be undone; the tenants will not
be able to pay their rents; "the farmers must rob, or beg, or leave the
country; the shopkeepers in this and every other town must break or
starve; the squire will hoard up all his good money to send to England and
keep some poor tailor or weaver in his house, who will be glad to get
bread at any rate."[66] Concrete facts are given to help the imagination.
Squire Conolly must have 250 horses to bring his half-yearly rents to
town; and the poor man will have to pay thirty-six of Wood's halfpence to
get a quart of twopenny ale.
How is this proved? One argument is a sufficient specimen. Nobody,
according to the patent, was to be forced to take Wood's halfpence; nor
could any one be obliged to receive more than fivepence halfpenny in any
one payment. This, of course, meant that the halfpence could only be used
as change, and a man must pay his debts in silver or gold whenever it was
possible to use a sixpence. It upsets Swift's statement about Squire
Connolly's rents. But Swift is equal to the emergency. The rule means, he
says, that every man must take fivepence halfpenny in every payment, _if
it be offered_; which, on the next page, becomes simply in every payment;
therefore making an easy assumption or two, he reckons that you will
receive 160_l._ a year in these halfpence; and therefore (by other
assumptions) lose 140_l._ a year.[67] It might have occurred to Swift, one
would think, that both parties to the transaction could not possibly be
losers. But he calmly assumes that the man who pays will lose in
proportion to the increased number of coins; and the man who receives, in
proportion to the depreciated value of each coin. He does not see, or
think it worth notice, that the two losses obviously counterbalance each
other; and he has an easy road to prophesying absolute ruin for everybody.
It would be almost as great a compliment to call this sophistry, as to
dignify with the name of satire a round assertion that an honest man is a
cheat or a rogue.
The real grievance, however, shows through the sham argument. "It is no
loss of honour," thought Swift, "to submit to the lion; but who, with the
figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a
rat?" Why should Wood have this profit (even if more reasonably estimated)
in defiance of the wishes of the nation? It is, says Swift, because he is
an Englishman and has great friends. He proposes to meet the attempt by a
general agreement not to take the halfpence. Briefly, the halfpence were
to be "Boycotted."
Before this second letter was written the English ministers had become
alarmed. A Report of the Privy Council (July 24, 1724) defended the
patent, but ended by recommending that the amount to be coined should be
reduced to 40,000_l._ Carteret was sent out as Lord Lieutenant to get this
compromise accepted. Swift replied by a third letter, arguing the question
of the patent, which he can "never suppose," or in other words, which
everybody knew, to have been granted as a "job for the interest of some
particular person." He vigorously asserts that the patent can never make
it obligatory to accept the halfpence, and tells a story much to the
purpose from old Leicester experience. The justices had reduced the price
of ale to three-halfpence a quart. One of them therefore requested that
they would make another order to appoint who should drink it, "for by
God," said he, "I will not."
The argument thus naturally led to a further and more important question.
The discussion as to the patent brought forward the question of right.
Wood and his friends, according to Swift, had begun to declare that the
resistance meant Jacobitism and rebellion; they asserted that the Irish
were ready to shake off their dependence upon the crown of England. Swift
took up the challenge and answered resolutely and eloquently. He took up
the broadest ground. Ireland, he declared, depended upon England in no
other sense than that in which England depended upon Ireland. Whoever
thinks otherwise, he said, "I, M. B. despair, desire to be excepted; for I
declare, next under God, I depend only on the king my sovereign, and the
laws of my own country. I am so far," he added, "from depending upon the
people of England, that if they should rebel, I would take arms and lose
every drop of my blood, to hinder the Pretender from being king of
Ireland."
It had been reported that somebody (Walpole presumably) had sworn to
thrust the halfpence down the throats of the Irish. The remedy, replied
Swift, is totally in your own hands, "and therefore I have digressed a
little ... to let you see that by the laws of God, of Nature, of Nations,
and of your own country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your
brethren in England." As Swift had already said in the third letter, no
one could believe that any English patent would stand half an hour after
an address from the English houses of Parliament such as that which had
been passed against Wood's by the Irish Parliament. Whatever
constitutional doubts might be raised, it was therefore come to be the
plain question whether or not the English ministers should simply override
the wishes of the Irish nation.
Carteret, upon landing, began by trying to suppress his adversary. A
reward of 300_l._ was offered for the discovery of the author of the
fourth letter. A prosecution was ordered against the printer. Swift went
to the levée of the Lord Lieutenant, and reproached him bitterly for his
severity against a poor tradesman who had published papers for the good of
his country. Carteret answered in a happy quotation from Virgil, a feat
which always seems to have brought consolation to the statesman of that
day.
Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt
Moliri.
Another story is more characteristic. Swift's butler had acted as his
amanuensis, and absented himself one night whilst the proclamation was
running. Swift thought that the butler was either treacherous or presuming
upon his knowledge of the secret. As soon as the man returned he ordered
him to strip off his livery and begone. "I am in your power," he said,
"and for that very reason I will not stand your insolence." The poor
butler departed, but preserved his fidelity; and Swift, when the tempest
had blown over, rewarded him by appointing him verger in the cathedral.
The grand jury threw out the bill against the printer in spite of all
Whitshed's efforts; they were discharged; and the next grand jury
presented Wood's halfpence as a nuisance. Carteret gave way, the patent
was surrendered, and Swift might congratulate himself upon a complete
victory.
The conclusion is in one respect rather absurd. The Irish succeeded in
rejecting a real benefit at the cost of paying Wood the profit which he
would have made, had he been allowed to confer it. Another point must be
admitted. Swift's audacious misstatements were successful for the time in
rousing the spirit of the people. They have led, however, to a very
erroneous estimate of the whole case. English statesmen and historians[68]
have found it so easy to expose his errors that they have thought his
whole case absurd. The grievance was not what it was represented,
therefore it is argued that there was no grievance. The very essence of
the case was that the Irish people were to be plundered by the German
mistress; and such plunder was possible because the English people, as
Swift says, never thought of Ireland except when there was nothing else
to be talked of in the coffee-houses.[69] Owing to the conditions of the
controversy, this grievance only came out gradually, and could never be
fully stated. Swift could never do more than hint at the transaction. His
letters (including three which appeared after the last mentioned,
enforcing the same case) have often been cited as models of eloquence, and
compared to Demosthenes. We must make some deduction from this, as in the
case of his former political pamphlets. The intensity of his absorption in
the immediate end, deprives them of some literary merits; and we, to whom
the sophistries are palpable enough, are apt to resent them. Anybody can
be effective in a way, if he chooses to lie boldly. Yet, in another sense,
it is hard to over-praise the letters. They have in a high degree the
peculiar stamp of Swift's genius; the vein of the most nervous
common-sense and pithy assertion with an undercurrent of intense passion,
the more impressive because it is never allowed to exhale in mere
rhetoric.
Swift's success, the dauntless front which he had shown to the oppressor,
made him the idol of his countrymen. A drapier's club was formed in his
honour, which collected the letters and drank toasts and sang songs to
celebrate their hero. In a sad letter to Pope, in 1737, he complains that
none of his equals care for him; but adds that as he walks the streets he
has "a thousand hats and blessings upon old scores which those we call the
gentry have forgot." The people received him as their champion. When he
returned from England in 1726, bells were rung, bonfires lighted and a
guard of honour escorted him to the deanery. Towns voted him their
freedom and received him like a prince. When Walpole spoke of arresting
him, a prudent friend told the minister that the messenger would require a
guard of 10,000 soldiers. Corporations asked his advice in elections, and
the weavers appealed to him on questions about their trade. In one of his
satires,[70] Swift had attacked a certain Serjeant Bettesworth--
Thus at the bar the booby Bettesworth
Though half-a-crown o'erpays his sweat's worth.
Bettesworth called upon him with, as Swift reports, a knife in his pocket,
and complained in such terms as to imply some intention of personal
violence. The neighbours instantly sent a deputation to the dean,
proposing to take vengeance upon Bettesworth, and though he induced them
to disperse peaceably, they formed a guard to watch the house; and
Bettesworth complained that his attack upon the dean had lowered his
professional income by 1200_l._ a year. A quaint example of his popularity
is given by Sheridan. A great crowd had collected to see an eclipse. Swift
thereupon sent out the bellman to give notice that the eclipse had been
postponed by the dean's orders; and the crowd dispersed.
Influence with the people, however, could not bring Swift back to power.
At one time there seemed to be a gleam of hope. Swift visited England
twice in 1726 and 1727. He paid long visits to his old friend Pope, and
again met Bolingbroke, now returned from exile, and trying to make a place
in English politics. Peterborough introduced the dean to Walpole, to whom
Swift detailed his views upon Irish politics. Walpole was the last man to
set about a great reform from mere considerations of justice and
philanthropy, and was not likely to trust a confidant of Bolingbroke. He
was civil but indifferent. Swift, however, was introduced by his friends
to Mrs. Howard, the mistress of the Prince of Wales, soon to become George
II. The princess, afterwards Queen Caroline, ordered Swift to come and see
her, and he complied, as he says, after nine commands. He told her that
she had lately seen a wild boy from Germany, and now he supposed she
wanted to see a wild dean from Ireland. Some civilities passed; Swift
offered some plaids of Irish manufacture, and the princess promised some
medals in return. When, in the next year, George I. died, the Opposition
hoped great things from the change. Pulteney had tried to get Swift's
powerful help for the _Craftsman_, the Opposition organ; and the
Opposition hoped to upset Walpole. Swift, who had thought of going to
France for his health, asked Mrs. Howard's advice. She recommended him to
stay; and he took the recommendation as amounting to a promise of support.
He had some hopes of obtaining English preferment in exchange for his
deanery in what he calls (in the date to one of his letters[71]) "wretched
Dublin in miserable Ireland." It soon appeared, however, that the mistress
was powerless; and that Walpole was to be as firm as ever in his seat.
Swift returned to Ireland, never again to leave it: to lose soon
afterwards his beloved Stella, and nurse an additional grudge against
courts and favourites.
The bitterness with which he resented Mrs. Howard's supposed faithlessness
is painfully illustrative in truth of the morbid state of mind which was
growing upon him. "You think," he says to Bolingbroke in 1729, "as I
ought to think, that it is time for me to have done with the world; and so
I would, if I could get into a better before I was called into the best,
and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." That terrible
phrase expresses but too vividly the state of mind which was now becoming
familiar to him. Separated by death and absence from his best friends, and
tormented by increasing illness, he looked out upon a state of things in
which he could see no ground for hope. The resistance to Wood's halfpence
had staved off immediate ruin; but had not cured the fundamental evil.
Some tracts upon Irish affairs, written after the Drapier's Letters,
sufficiently indicate his despairing vein. "I am," he says in 1737, when
proposing some remedy for the swarms of beggars in Dublin, "a desponder by
nature," and he has found out that the people will never stir themselves
to remove a single grievance. His old prejudices were as keen as ever, and
could dictate personal outbursts. He attacked the bishops bitterly for
offering certain measures which in his view sacrificed the permanent
interests of the Church to that of the actual occupants. He showed his own
sincerity by refusing to take fines for leases which would have benefited
himself at the expense of his successors. With equal earnestness he still
clung to the Test Acts, and assailed the Protestant dissenters with all
his old bitterness, and ridiculed their claims to brotherhood with
Churchmen. To the end he was a Churchman before everything. One of the
last of his poetical performances was prompted by the sanction given by
the Irish Parliament to an opposition to certain "titles of ejectment." He
had defended the right of the Irish Parliament against English rulers; but
when it attacked the interests of his Church his fury showed itself in
the most savage satire that he ever wrote, the _Legion Club_. It is an
explosion of wrath tinged with madness.
Could I from the building's top
Hear the rattling thunder drop,
While the devil upon the roof
(If the devil be thunder-proof)
Should with poker fiery red
Crack the stones and melt the lead,
Drive them down on every skull
When the den of thieves is full;
Quite destroy the harpies' nest,
How might this our isle be blest!
What follows fully keeps up to this level. Swift flings filth like a
maniac, plunges into ferocious personalities, and ends fitly with the
execration,--
May their God, the devil, confound them.
He was seized with one of his fits whilst writing the poem and was never
afterwards capable of sustained composition.
Some further pamphlets--especially one on the State of Ireland--repeat and
enforce his views. One of them requires special mention. The _Modest
Proposal_ (written in 1729) _for Preventing the Children of Poor People in
Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country_--the proposal
being that they should be turned into articles of food--gives the very
essence of Swift's feeling, and is one of the most tremendous pieces of
satire in existence. It shows the quality already noticed. Swift is
burning with a passion, the glow of which makes other passions look cold,
as it is said that some bright lights cause other illuminating objects to
cast a shadow. Yet his face is absolutely grave, and he details his plan
as calmly as a modern projector suggesting the importation of Australian
meat. The superficial coolness may be revolting to tender-hearted people,
and has indeed led to condemnation of the supposed ferocity of the author
almost as surprising as the criticisms which can see in it nothing but an
exquisite piece of humour. It is, in truth, fearful to read even now. Yet
we can forgive and even sympathize when we take it for what it really
is--the most complete expression of burning indignation against
intolerable wrongs. It utters, indeed, a serious conviction. "I confess
myself," says Swift in a remarkable paper,[72] "to be touched with a very
sensible pleasure when I hear of a mortality in any country parish or
village, where the wretches are forced to pay for a filthy cabin and two
ridges of potatoes treble the worth; brought up to steal and beg for want
of work; to whom death would be the best thing to be wished for, on
account both of themselves and the public." He remarks in the same place
on the lamentable contradiction presented in Ireland to the maxim that the
"people are the riches of a nation," and the _Modest Proposal_ is the
fullest comment on this melancholy reflection. After many visionary
proposals, he has at last hit upon the plan, which has at least the
advantage that by adopting it "we can incur no danger of disobliging
England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh
being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt,
although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up a
whole nation without it."
Swift once asked Delany[73] whether the "corruptions and villanies of men
in power did not eat his flesh and exhaust his spirits?" "No," said
Delany. "Why, how can you help it?" said Swift. "Because," replied
Delany, "I am commanded to the contrary--_fret not thyself because of the
ungodly_." That, like other wise maxims, is capable of an ambiguous
application. As Delany took it, Swift might perhaps have replied that it
was a very comfortable maxim--for the ungodly. His own application of
Scripture is different. It tells us, he says, in his proposal for using
Irish manufactures, that "oppression makes a wise man mad." If, therefore,
some men are not mad, it must be because they are not wise. In truth, it
is characteristic of Swift that he could never learn the great lesson of
submission even to the inevitable. He could not, like an easy-going
Delany, submit to oppression which might possibly be resisted with
success; but as little could he submit when all resistance was hopeless.
His rage, which could find no better outlet, burnt inwardly and drove him
mad. It is very interesting to compare Swift's wrathful denunciations with
Berkeley's treatment of the same before in the _Querist_ (1735-7).
Berkeley is full of luminous suggestions upon economical questions which
are entirely beyond Swift's mark. He is in a region quite above the
sophistries of the _Drapier's Letters_. He sees equally the terrible
grievance that no people in the world is so beggarly, wretched, and
destitute as the common Irish. But he thinks all complaints against the
English rule useless and therefore foolish. If the English restrain our
trade ill-advisedly, is it not, he asks, plainly our interest to
accommodate ourselves to them (No. 136)? Have we not the advantage of
English protection without sharing English responsibilities? He asks,
"whether England doth not really love us and wish well to us as bone of
her bone and flesh of her flesh? and whether it be not our part to
cultivate this love and affection all manner of ways?" (Nos. 322, 323.)
One can fancy how Swift must have received this characteristic suggestion
of the admirable Berkeley, who could not bring himself to think ill of any
one. Berkeley's main contention is no doubt sound in itself, namely, that
the welfare of the country really depended on the industry and economy of
its inhabitants, and that such qualities would have made the Irish
comfortable in spite of all English restrictions and Government abuses.
But, then, Swift might well have answered that such general maxims are
idle. It is all very well for divines to tell people to become good and to
find out that then they will be happy. But how are they to be made good?
Are the Irish intrinsically worse than other men, or is their laziness and
restlessness due to special and removable circumstances? In the latter
case is there not more real value in attacking tangible evils than in
propounding general maxims and calling upon all men to submit to
oppression, and even to believe in the oppressor's good-will in the name
of Christian charity? To answer those questions would be to plunge into
interminable and hopeless controversies. Meanwhile Swift's fierce
indignation against English oppression might almost as well have been
directed against a law of nature for any immediate result. Whether the
rousing of the national spirit was any benefit is a question which I must
leave to others. In any case, the work, however darkened by personal
feeling or love of class-privilege, expressed as hearty a hatred of
oppression as ever animated a human being.