The English clique at the Castle were too much occupied in checking fancied disaffection and dispensing patronage to secure the support of hungry partisans, to care for the welfare of the masses. The local gentry, despised by the governing clique, allowed matters to drift from bad to worse. The better part of the population left the country in disgust. Such was the condition of Ireland when Swift stood out as its defender. The wrongs of Ireland cried to heaven for adjustment. Since the days of Charles II. the Irish had been forbidden to seek a market in England for their cattle. Since the last years of William III. harsh laws crushed out the woollen trade, restricting it to a precarious market formed by a contraband trade with France, every year getting worse. Misery wanted only a voice to utter its lamentation. Swift assumed this function in his "Proposal for the universal use of manufactures," published in 1720. Comments on the pamphlets are needless. The evil of absenteeism was of ancient date and the efforts to eradicate it still older. By a statute of Richard II., two-thirds of the estate of an absentee were forfeited to the Crown. The Lancastrian kings pursued the same policy. Henry VIII. made a strong effort to correct the abuse, by resuming whole Irish estates of some English nobles who were habitual absentees. Under the early Stuarts the same course was pursued, but the evil continues to our own day without any abatement. In Swift's time, residence had not been encouraged; statutes to enforce it remained on the statute-book, but they were a dead letter. The landlord drew the rent from Ireland, without helping to pay the taxes. He spent it in England and frequently more than the amount, leaving the estates encumbered with mortgages in the hands of English mortgagees. The holder of an Irish office thought only of its emoluments, and was indignant at any suggestion of living in the country burdened with his support, and nominally entitled to his services. The land was reduced to a state of bankruptcy and desolation; famine swept through it, and the people were perishing in thousands. It was at this terrible juncture that Swift put forth in despair his "Modest Proposal," one of the last efforts of his marvellous genius, and it shamed the government into taking some steps to redress the suffering which prevailed. "Swift's pieces relating to Ireland," says Edmund Burke, "are those of a public nature, in which the Dean appears, as usual, in the best light, because they do honour to his heart as well as his head, furnishing some additional proofs, that though he was very free in his abuse of the inhabitants of that country, as well natives as foreigners, he had their interest sincerely at heart, and perfectly understood it. His sermon on doing good, though peculiarly adapted to Ireland, and Wood's design upon it, contains perhaps the best motives to Patriotism that was ever delivered within so small a compass."