The author of "The Drapier's Letters," we need hardly say, was Dean Swift. Swift had for some years withdrawn himself from the political world. He is described by one of his biographers as having "amused himself for three or four years with poetry, conversation, and trifles." Now and then, however, he published some letter which showed his interest in the condition of the people among whom he lived; his proposal, for example, "for the universal use of Irish manufacture in clothes and furniture of houses, etc.," was written in the year 1720. This letter--the printer of which was subjected to a Government prosecution--contains a passage which has been, perhaps, {243} more often and more persistently misquoted than any other observation of any author we can now remember. It seems to have become an article of faith with many writers and most readers that Swift said, "Burn everything that comes from England, except its coals." Without much hope of correcting that false impression so far as the bulk of the reading and quoting public is concerned, we may observe that Swift never said anything of the kind. This is what he did say: "I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody's that 'Ireland would never be happy until a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals.' 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 was not an Irish patriot; he was not, indeed, an Irishman at all, except by the accident of birth, and now by the accident of residence. He did not love the country; he would not have lived there a week if he could. He had no affection for the people, and, at first, very little sympathy with them. He was always angry if anybody regarded him as an Irishman. His friends were all found among what may be described as the English and Protestant colony in Ireland. He felt towards the native Irish--the Irish Catholics--very much as the official of an English Government might feel towards some savage tribe whom he had been sent out to govern. But at the same time it is an entire mistake to represent Swift as insincere in the efforts which he made to ameliorate the condition of the Irish people, and to redress some of the gross wrongs which he saw inflicted on them. The administrator of whom we have already spoken might have gone out to the savage country with nothing but contempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane and a just man, it would be natural for him as time went on to feel keenly if any injustice were inflicted on the poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up {244} with indignation as their defender and their champion. So it was with Swift. [Sidenote: 1724--The drapier's arguments] Little as he liked the Irish people in the beginning, yet he