Madam,
I have received your ladyship’s letter, and carefully considered every part of it, and shall give you my opinion how you ought to proceed for your own security. But first I must beg leave to tell your ladyship, that you were guilty of an unpardonable weakness the other day, in making that offer to your lover of standing by him in any quarrel he might have with your rival. You know very well, that she began to apprehend he had designs of using her as he had done you; and common prudence might have directed you rather to have entered into some measures with her for joining against him, until he might at least be brought to some reasonable terms; but your invincible hatred to that lady has carried your resentments so high, as to be the cause of your ruin; yet if you please to consider, this aversion of yours began a good while before she became your rival, and was taken up by you and your family in a sort of compliment to your lover, who formerly had a great abhorrence of her. It is true, since that time you have suffered very much by her encroachments upon your estate,[38] but she never pretended to govern and direct you; and now you have drawn a new enemy upon yourself; for I think you may count upon all the ill offices she can possibly do you, by her credit with her husband; whereas, if, instead of openly declaring against her, without any provocation, you had but sat still awhile, and said nothing, that gentleman would have lessened his severity to you out of perfect fear. This weakness of yours you call generosity; but I doubt there was more in the matter: in short, madam, I have good reasons to think you were betrayed to it by the pernicious counsel of some about you; for to my certain knowledge, several of your tenants and servants to whom you have been very kind, are as arrant rascals as any in the country. I know the matters of fact, as you relate them, are true, and fairly represented.
My advice therefore is this: get your tenants together as soon as you conveniently can, and make them agree to the following resolutions.
First, that your family and servants have no dependence upon the said gentleman, farther than by the old agreement, which obliges you to have the same steward, and to regulate your household by such methods as you should both agree to.
Secondly, that you will not carry your goods to the market of his town, unless you please, nor be hindered from carrying them anywhere else.
Thirdly, that the servants you pay wages to shall live at home, or forfeit their places.
Fourthly, that whatever lease you make to a tenant, it shall not be in his power to break it.
If he will agree to these articles, I advise you to contribute as largely as you can to all charges of parish and county.
I can assure you, several of that gentleman’s ablest tenants and servants are against his severe usage of you and would be glad of an occasion to convince the rest of their error, if you will not be wanting to yourself.
If the gentleman refuses these just and reasonable offers, pray let me know it, and perhaps I may think of something else that will be more effectual.
I am,
Madam,
Your Ladyship’s, etc.
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 was written at this time, by an able hand, to persuade the people of this 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 the forest; which any man of common prudence would immediately discover, by persuading them to define what they meant 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 these many years, which 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 has 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 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, although very much 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 he has no other method to supply the deficiency; I desire to know, my lord, whether such a person has any other course to take, than to sink half his expenses in every article of economy, to save himself from ruin and a gaol.
Is not this more than doubly the case of Ireland, where the want of money, the irretrievable ruin of trade, with the other evils above-mentioned, and many more too well known and felt, and too numerous or invidious to be related, 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 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 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 directly came from thence. 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 laces, 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, wherein the women have their share, and which is all we have to comfort us, and deduct seventy thousand pounds more for over-reaching, 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 bury their brains 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 course of foppery; and still have room left to vie with each other and equally show 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 the 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 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.
The corporation of weavers in woollen and silk, who have so frequently offered proposals both to your Grace and to me, are the hottest and coldest generation of men that I have known. About a month ago, they attended your Grace, when I had the honour to be with you; and designed me the same favour. They desired you would recommend to your clergy to wear gowns of Irish stuffs which might probably spread the example among all their brethren in the kingdom; and perhaps among the lawyers and gentlemen of the university, and among the citizens of those corporations who appear in gowns on solemn occasions. I then mentioned a kind of stuff, not above eightpence a yard, which I heard had been contrived by some of the trade, and was very convenient. I desired they would prepare some of that, or any sort of black stuff, on a certain day, when your Grace would appoint as many clergymen as could readily be found to meet at your palace; and there give their opinions; and that your Grace’s visitation approaching, you could then have the best opportunity of seeing what could be done in a matter of such consequence, as they seemed to think, to the woollen manufacture. But instead of attending, as was expected, they came to me a fortnight after with a new proposal, that something should be written by an acceptable and able hand, to promote in general the wearing of home manufactures; and their civilities would fix that work upon me.
I asked if they had prepared the stuffs, as they had promised, and your Grace expected; but they had not made the least step in the matter, nor, as it appears, thought of it more.
I did, some years ago, propose to the masters and principal dealers in the home-manufactures of silk and wool, that they should meet together; and, after mature consideration, publish advertisements to the following purpose:—
“That in order to encourage the wearing of Irish manufactures in silk and woollen, they gave notice to the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, that they, the undersigned, would enter into bonds, for themselves and for each other, to sell the several sorts of stuffs, cloths, and silks, made to the best perfection they were able, for certain fixed prices; and in such a manner, that if a child were sent to any of their shops, the buyer might be secure of the value and goodness and measure of the ware; and, lest this might be thought to look like a monopoly, any other member of the trade might be admitted, upon such conditions as should be agreed on. And if any person whatsoever should complain that he was ill-used, in the value and goodness of what he bought, the matter should be examined, the persons injured be fully satisfied by the whole corporation without delay, and the dishonest seller be struck out of the society, unless it appeared evidently that the failure proceeded only from mistake.”
The mortal danger is, that if these dealers could prevail, by the goodness and cheapness of their cloths and stuffs, to give a turn to the principal people of Ireland in favour of their goods; they would relapse into the knavish practice, peculiar to this kingdom, which is apt to run through all trades, even so low as a common ale-seller; who, as soon as he gets a vogue for his liquor, and outsells his neighbours, thinks his credit will put off the worst he can buy till his customers will come no more. Thus, I have known at London, in a general mourning, the drapers dye black all their damaged goods, and sell them at double rates; then complain, and petition the Court, that they are ready to starve by the continuance of the mourning.
Therefore, I say, those principal weavers who would enter into such a compact as I have mentioned, must give sufficient security against all such practices; for if once the women can persuade their husbands that foreign goods, besides the finery, will be as cheap, and do more service, our last state will be worse than the first.
I do not here pretend to digest perfectly the method by which these principal shopkeepers shall proceed, in such a proposal; but my meaning is clear enough, and cannot be reasonably objected against.
We have seen what a destructive loss the kingdom received by the detestable fraud of the merchants, or northern linen weavers, or both; notwithstanding all the cares of the governor of that board, when we had an offer of commerce with the Spaniards for our linens to the value, as I am told, of thirty thousand pounds a year. But, while we deal like pedlars, we shall practise like pedlars, and sacrifice all honesty to the present urging advantage.
What I have said may serve as an answer to the desire made me by the corporation of weavers, that I would offer my notions to the public. As to anything farther, let them apply themselves to the Parliament in their next session. Let them prevail on the House of Commons to grant one very reasonable request; and I shall think there is still some spirit left in the nation, when I read a vote to this purpose: “Resolved, nemine contradicente, That this House will, for the future, wear no clothes but such as are made of Irish growth, or of Irish manufacture, nor will permit their wives or children to wear any other; and that they will, to the utmost, endeavour to prevail with their friends, relations, dependents, and tenants, to follow their example.” And if, at the same time, they could banish tea and coffee, and china-ware, out of their families, and force their wives to chat their scandal over an infusion of sage, or other wholesome domestic vegetables, we might possibly be able to subsist, and pay our absentees, pensioners, generals, civil officers, appeals, colliers, temporary travellers, students, school boys, splenetic visitors of Bath, Tunbridge, and Epsom, with all other smaller drains, by sending our crude, unwrought goods to England, and receiving from thence, and all other countries, nothing but what is fully manufactured, and keep a few potatoes and oatmeal for our own subsistence.
I have been for a dozen years past wisely prognosticating the present condition of this kingdom; which any human creature of common sense could foretell, with as little sagacity as myself. My meaning is, that a consumptive body must needs die, which has spent all its spirits, and received no nourishment. Yet I am often tempted to pity, when I hear the poor farmer and cottager lamenting the hardness of the times, and imputing them either to one or two ill seasons, which better climates than ours are more exposed to; or to scarcity of silver, which, to a nation of liberty, would only be a slight and temporary inconvenience, to be removed at a month’s warning.
I.
To Messrs. Truman and Layfield.
Gentlemen,—
I am inclined to think that I received a letter from you two, last summer, directed to Dublin, while I was in the country, whither it was sent me; and I ordered an answer to it to be printed, but it seems it had little effect, and I suppose this will not have much more. But the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed. And, gentlemen, I am to tell you another thing: that the world is too regardless of what we write for public good; that after we have delivered our thoughts, without any prospect of advantage, or of reputation, which latter is not to be had but by subscribing our names, we cannot prevail upon a printer to be at the charge of sending it into the world unless we will be at all or half the expense; and although we are willing enough to bestow our labours, we think it unreasonable to be out of pocket; because it probably may not consist with the situation of our affairs.
I do very much approve your good intentions, and in a great measure your manner of declaring them; and I do imagine you intended that the world should not only know your sentiments, but my answer, which I shall impartially give.... Although your letter be directed to me, yet I take myself to be only an imaginary person; for, although I conjecture I had formerly one from you, yet I never answered it otherwise than in print; neither was I at a loss to know the reasons why so many people of this kingdom were transporting themselves to America.
And if this encouragement were owing to a pamphlet written, giving an account of the country of Pennsylvania, to tempt people to go thither, I do declare that those who were tempted, by such a narrative, to such a journey, were fools, and the author a most impudent knave; at least, if it be the same pamphlet I saw when it first came out, which is about twenty-five years ago, dedicated to William Penn (whom by a mistake you call “Sir William Penn,”) and styling him, by authority of the Scripture, “Most noble Governor.” For I was very well acquainted with Penn, and did, some years after, talk with him upon that pamphlet, and the impudence of the author, who spoke so many things in praise of the soil and climate, which Penn himself did absolutely contradict. For he did assure me, “That this country wanted the shelter of mountains, which left it open to the northern winds from Hudson’s Bay and the Frozen Sea, which destroyed all plantations of trees, and was even pernicious to all common vegetables.” But, indeed, New York, Virginia, and other parts less northward, or more defended by mountains, are described as excellent countries; but upon what conditions of advantage foreigners go thither, I am yet to seek. What evils our people avoid by running from hence, is easier to be determined. They conceive themselves to live under the tyranny of most cruel exacting landlords, who have no views farther than increasing their rent-rolls. Secondly, you complain of the want of trade, whereof you seem not to know the reason. Thirdly, you lament most justly the money spent by absentees in England. Fourthly, you complain that your linen manufacture declines. Fifthly, that your tithe collectors oppress you. Sixthly, that your children have no hopes of preferment in the church, the revenue, or the army; to which you might have added the law, and all civil employments whatsoever. Seventhly, you are undone for want of silver, and want all other money.
I could easily add some other motives, which, to men of spirit, who desire and expect, and think they deserve the common privileges of human nature, would be of more force, than any you have yet named, to drive them out of this kingdom. But as these speculations may probably not much affect the brains of your people, I shall choose to let them pass unmentioned.... I must confess to you both, that if one reason of your people’s deserting us be the despair of things growing better in their own country, I have not one syllable to answer; because that would be to hope for what is impossible, and so I have been telling the public these ten years. For there are events which must precede any such blessing; first, a liberty of trade; secondly, a share of preferments in all kinds, equal to the British natives; and thirdly, a return of those absentees, who take almost one half of the kingdom’s revenue. As to the first and second, there is nothing left us but despair; and for the third, it will never happen till the kingdom has no money to send them; for which, in my own particular, I shall not be sorry. The exactions of landlords has indeed been a grievance of above twenty years’ standing. But as to what you object about the severe clauses relating to the improvement, the fault lies wholly on the other side; for the landlords, either by their ignorance, or greediness of making large rent-rolls, have performed this matter so ill, as we see by experience, that there is not one tenant in five hundred who has made any improvement worth mentioning: for which I appeal to any man who rides through the kingdom, where little is to be found among the tenants but beggary and desolation; the cabins of the Scotch themselves, in Ulster, being as dirty and miserable as those of the wildest Irish. Whereas good firm penal laws for improvement, with a tolerable easy rent, and a reasonable period of time, would, in twenty years, have increased the rents of Ireland at least a third part of the intrinsic value. I am glad to hear you speak with some decency of the clergy, and to impute the exactions you lament to the managers or farmers of the tithes. But you entirely mistake the fact; for I defy the most wicked and most powerful clergyman in the kingdom to oppress the meanest farmer in the parish; and I defy the same clergyman to prevent himself from being cheated by the same farmer, whenever that farmer shall be disposed to be knavish or peevish.
For, although the Ulster tithing-teller is more advantageous to the clergy than any other in the kingdom, yet the minister can demand no more than his tenth; and where the corn much exceeds the small tithes, as, except in some districts, I am told it always does, he is at the mercy of every stubborn farmer, especially of those whose sect as well as interest incline them to opposition. However, I take it that your people bent for America do not show the best side of their prudence in making this one part of their complaint; yet they are so far wise, as not to make the payment of tithes a scruple of conscience, which is too gross for any Protestant dissenter, except a Quaker, to pretend. But do your people indeed think, that if tithes were abolished, or delivered into the hands of the landlord, after the blessed manner in the Scotch spiritual economy, the tenant would sit easier in his rent under the same person, who must be lord of the soil and of the tithe together?
I am ready enough to grant, that the oppression of landlords, the utter ruin of trade, with its necessary consequences, the want of money, half the revenues of the kingdom spent abroad, the continued dearth of three years, and the strong delusion in your people by false allurement from America, may be the chief motives of their eagerness after such an expedition. But there is likewise another temptation, which is not of inconsiderable weight; which is their itch of living in a country where their sect is predominant, and where their eyes and consciences will not be offended by the stumbling block of ceremonies, habits, and spiritual titles. But I was surprised to find that those calamities, whereof we are innocent, have been sufficient to drive many families out of their country, who had no reason to complain of oppressive landlords. For, while I was last year in the northern parts, a person of quality, whose estate was let above twenty years ago, and then at a very reasonable rent, some for leases of lives, and some perpetuities, did, in a few months, purchase eleven of those leases at a very inconsiderable price, although they were, two years ago, reckoned to pay but half value; whence it is manifest that our present miserable condition, and the dismal prospect of worse, with other reasons above assigned, are sufficient to put men upon trying this desperate experiment of changing the scene they are in, although landlords should, by a miracle, become less inhuman.
There is hardly a scheme proposed for improving the trade of this kingdom, which does not manifestly show 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 necessaries, conveniences, or even comforts of life, are denied us by nature, or not to be attained by labour and industry! Are those detestable extravagances of Flanders lace, English cloths made of our own wool, and other goods, Italian or Indian silks, tea, coffee, chocolate, chinaware, 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, 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 revenues 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!...
Is there any mortal who can show 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?...
II.
Answer to several Letters sent from unknown Hands. 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 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.
This letter was addressed to Sir Robert Walpole on Swift’s return to Ireland in 1726 before his final rupture with the Premier the following year. Swift endeavoured to combat the English prejudices of the minister on the mode of managing Ireland, seeking the emancipation of his country rather than personal advancement. Here he seems to assume the character of the Drapier besides adding his initials.
Sir,
By the last packets I had the favour of yours, and am surprised that you should apply to a person so ill-qualified as I am, for a full and impartial account of the state of our trade. I have always lived as retired as possible; I have carefully avoided the perplexed honour of city-offices; I have never minded anybody’s business but my own; upon all which accounts, and several others, you might easily have found among my fellow-citizens, persons more capable to resolve the weighty questions you put to me than I can pretend to be. But being entirely at leisure, even at this season of the year, when I used to have scarce time sufficient to perform the necessary offices of life, I will endeavour to comply with your requests, cautioning you not implicitly to rely upon what I say, excepting what belongs to that branch of trade in which I am more immediately concerned.
The Irish trade is, at present, in the most deplorable condition that can be imagined; to remedy it, the causes of its languishment must be inquired into. But as those causes (you may assure yourself) will not be removed, you may look upon it as a thing past hope of recovery.
The first and greatest shock our trade received was from an act passed in the reign of King William, in the Parliament of England, prohibiting the exportation of wool manufactured in Ireland, an act (as the event plainly shows) fuller of greediness than good policy; an act as beneficial to France and Spain, as it has been destructive to England and Ireland. At the passing of this fatal act, the condition of our trade was glorious and flourishing, though no way interfering with the English; we made no broadcloths above 6s. per yard; coarse druggets, bays and shalloons, worsted damasks, strong draught-works, slight half-works, and gaudy stuffs, were the only products of our looms: these were partly consumed by the meanest of our people, and partly sent to the northern nations, from which we had in exchange timber, iron, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, and hard dollars. At the time the current money of Ireland was foreign silver, a man could hardly receive 100l., without finding the coin of all the northern powers, and every prince of the empire among it.
This money was returned into England for fine cloths silks, &c., for our own wear, for rent, for coals, for hardware, and all other English manufactures, and in a great measure supplied the London merchants with foreign silver for exportation.
The repeated clamours of the English weavers produced this act, so destructive to themselves and us.
They looked with envious eyes upon our prosperity, and complained of being undersold by us in those commodities which themselves did not deal in. At their instances the act was passed, and we lost our profitable northern trade. Have they got it? No; surely you have found out they have ever since declined in the trade they so happily possessed? You shall find (if I am rightly informed) towns without one loom in them, which subsisted entirely upon the woollen manufactory before the passing of this unhappy bill; and I will try if I can give the true reasons for the decay of their trade, and our calamities.
Three parts in four of the inhabitants of that district of the town where I dwell were English manufacturers, whom either misfortunes in trade, little petty debts contracted through idleness, or the pressures of a numerous family, had driven into our cheap country. These were employed in working up our coarse wool, while the finest was sent into England. Several of these had taken the children of the native Irish apprentices to them, who being humbled by the forfeiture of upward of three millions by the Revolution, were obliged to stoop to a mechanic industry. Upon the passing of this bill, we were obliged to dismiss thousands of these people from our service. Those who had settled their affairs returned home, and overstocked England with workmen; those whose debts were unsatisfied went to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where they met with good encouragement, whereby the natives, having got a firm footing in the trade, being acute fellows, soon became as good workmen as any we have, and supply the foreign manufactories with a constant recruit of artisans; our island lying much more under pasture than any in Europe. The foreigners (notwithstanding all the restrictions the English Parliament has bound us up with) are furnished with the greatest quantity of our choicest wool. I need not tell you, sir, that a custom-house oath is held as little sacred here as in England, or that it is common for masters of vessels to swear themselves bound for one of the English wool-ports, and unload in France or Spain. By this means the trade in those ports is, in a great measure, destroyed, and we were obliged to try our hands at finer works, having only our own consumption to depend upon; and I can assure you we have, in several kinds of narrow goods, even exceeded the English, and I believe we shall in a few years more, be able to equal them in broadcloths; but this you may depend upon, that scarce the tenth part of English goods are now imported, of what used to be before the famous act.
The only manufactured wares we are allowed to export, are linen cloth and linen yarn, which are marketable only in England; the rest of our commodities are wool, restrained to England, and raw hides, skins, tallow, beef, and butter. Now these are things for which the northern nations have no occasion; we are therefore obliged, instead of carrying woollen goods to their markets, and bringing home money, to purchase their commodities.
In France, Spain, and Portugal, our wares are more valuable, though it must be owned, our fraudulent trade in wool is the best branch of our commerce; from hence we get wines, brandy, and fruit, very cheap, and in great perfection; so that though England has constrained us to be poor, they have given us leave to be merry. From these countries we bring home moydores, pistoles, and louisdores, without which we should scarce have a penny to turn upon.
To England we are allowed to send nothing but linen cloth, yarn, raw hides, skins, tallow, and wool. From thence we have coals, for which we always pay ready money, India goods, English woollen and silks, tobacco, hardware, earthenware, salt, and several other commodities. Our exportations to England are very much overbalanced by our importations; so that the course of exchange is generally too high, and people choose rather to make their remittances to England in specie, than by a bill, and our nation is perpetually drained of its little running cash.
Another cause of the decay of trade, scarcity of money, and swelling of exchange, is the unnatural affectation of our gentry to reside in and about London. Their rents are remitted to them, and spent there. The countryman wants employment from them; the country shopkeeper wants their custom. For this reason he can’t pay his Dublin correspondent readily, nor take off a great quantity of his wares. Therefore the Dublin merchant can’t employ the artisan, nor keep up his credit in foreign markets.
I have discoursed some of these gentlemen, persons esteemed for good sense, and demanded a reason for this, their so unaccountable proceeding—expensive to them for the present, ruinous to their country, and destructive to the future value of their estates—and find all their answers summed up under three heads, curiosity, pleasure, and loyalty to King George. The two first excuses deserve no answer; let us try the validity of the third. Would not loyalty be much better expressed by gentlemen staying in their respective counties, influencing their dependents by their examples, saving their own wealth, and letting their neighbours profit by their necessary expenses, thereby keeping them from misery and its unavoidable consequence, discontent? Or is it better to flock to London, be lost in a crowd, kiss the King’s hand, and take a view of the royal family? The seeing of the royal house may animate their zeal for it; but other advantages I know not. What employment have any of our gentlemen got by their attendance at Court, to make up to them their expenses? Why, about forty of them have been created peers, and a little less than a hundred of them baronets and knights. For these excellent advantages, thousands of our gentry have squeezed their tenants, impoverished the trader, and impaired their own fortunes! Another great calamity is the exorbitant raising of the rents of lands. Upon the determination of all leases made before the year 1690, a gentleman thinks he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has only doubled his rent-roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent—leases granted but for a small term of years—tenants tied down to hard conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to the best advantage, by the certainty they have of their rent being raised on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the improvements they shall make. Thus is honest industry restrained; the farmer is a slave to his landlord; ’tis well if he can cover his family with a coarse, home-spun frieze. The artisan has little dealings with him; yet he is obliged to take his provisions from him at an extravagant price, otherwise the farmer cannot pay his rent.
The proprietors of lands keep great part of them in their own hands for sheep-pasture; and there are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed, if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire’s dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation, on condition of being as very slaves as any in America. What can be more deplorable than to behold wretches starving in the midst of plenty?
We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find them employed; but then we don’t consider they have nothing to do.
Sir William Temple, in his excellent remarks on the United Provinces, inquires, why Holland, which has the fewest and worst ports and commodities of any nation in Europe, should abound in trade, and Ireland, which has the most and best of both, should have none? This great man attributes this surprising accident to the natural aversion man has for labour; who will not be persuaded to toil and fatigue himself for the superfluities of life throughout the week, when he may provide himself with all necessary subsistence by the labour of a day or two. But, with due submission to Sir William’s profound judgment, the want of trade with us is rather owing to the cruel restraints we lie under, than to any disqualifications whatsoever in our inhabitants. I have not, sir, for these thirty years past, since I was concerned in trade (the greatest part of which time distresses have been flowing in upon us), ever observed them to swell so suddenly to such a height as they have done within these few months. Our present calamities are not to be represented; you can have no notion of them without beholding them. Numbers of miserable objects crowd our doors, begging us to take their wares at any price, to prevent their families from immediate starving. We cannot part with our money to them, both because we know not when we shall have vent for our goods, and as there are no debts paid, we are afraid of reducing ourselves to their lamentable circumstances. The dismal time of trade we had during Marr’s Troubles in Scotland, are looked upon as happy days when compared with the present. I need not tell you, sir, that this griping want, this dismal poverty, this additional woe, must be put to the accursed stocks, which have desolated our country more effectually than England. Stock-jobbing was a kind of traffic we were utterly unacquainted with. We went late to the South Sea market, and bore a great share in the losses of it, without having tasted any of its profits.
If many in England have been ruined by stocks, some have been advanced. The English have a free and open trade to repair their losses; but, above all, a wise, vigilant, and uncorrupted Parliament and ministry, strenuously endeavouring to restore public trade to its former happy state. Whilst we, having lost the greatest part of our cash, without any probability of its returning, must despair of retrieving our losses by trade, and have before our eyes the dismal prospect of universal poverty and desolation.
I believe, sir, you are by this time heartily tired with this indigested letter, and are firmly persuaded of the truth of what I said in the beginning of it, that you had much better have imposed this task on some of our citizens of greater abilities. But perhaps, sir, such a letter as this may be, for the singularity of it, entertaining to you, who correspond with the politest and most learned men in Europe. But I am satisfied you will excuse its want of exactness and perspicuity when you consider my education, my being unaccustomed to writings of this nature, and, above all, those calamitous objects which constantly surround us, sufficient to disturb the clearest imagination, and the soundest judgment.
Whatever cause I have given you, by this letter, to think worse of my sense and judgment, I fancy I have given you a manifest proof that I am, sir,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
J. S.
The social condition of Ireland at the above period has been already briefly described. When the landlord class were degraded and the tenantry debased by the iniquitous laws of Charles II. and William III., which suppressed the trade of the country, the oppressed people found in Swift a mouthpiece for their wrongs. The above proposal was the voice of the nation rendered articulate by his utterance. It proposes in effect a reprisal on England for her restrictions, by a refusal to use anything that comes thence. A confederation is to be formed, pledged to use nothing that is not of Irish manufacture. Everything, he trusts, will be burned that comes from England, except the people and the coals. Swift’s proposal was faulty in political economy. Of this the age knew little, and Swift cared less. 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.
A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture,