Ireland in the Days of Dean Swift (Irish Tracts, 1720 to 1734)Swift, Jonathan
History
Ireland in the Days of Dean Swift (Irish Tracts, 1720 to 1734)
Swift, Jonathan
Ireland -- History -- 18th century; Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745
Sir, upon the whole, your paper is a very crude piece, liable to more
objections than there are lines; but I think your meaning is good, and so
far you are pardonable.
If you will propose a general contribution for supporting the poor in
potatoes and butter-milk till the new corn comes in, perhaps you may
succeed better, because the thing at least is possible; and I think if our
brethren in England would contribute upon this emergency, out of the
million they gain from us every year, they would do a piece of justice as
well as charity. In the meantime, go and preach to your own tenants to
fall to the plough as fast as they can, and prevail with your neighbouring
squires to do the same with theirs; or else die with the guilt of having
driven away half the inhabitants, and starving the rest.
But why all this concern for the poor? We want them not, as the country is
now managed; they may follow thousands of their leaders, and seek their
bread abroad. Where the plough has no work, one family can do the business
of fifty, and you may send away the other forty-nine. An admirable piece
of husbandry, never known or practised by the wisest nations, who
erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country!
If so wretched a state of things would allow it, methinks I could have a
malicious pleasure, after all the warning I have in vain given the public,
at my own peril, for several years past, to see the consequences and
events answering in every particular. I pretend to no sagacity; what I
writ was little more than what I had discoursed to several persons, who
were generally of my opinion, and it was obvious to every common
understanding that such effects must needs follow from such causes--a
fair issue of things begun upon party rage, while some sacrificed the
public to fury, and others to ambition; while a spirit of faction and
oppression reigned in every part of the country, where gentlemen, instead
of consulting the ease of their tenants, or cultivating their lands, were
worrying one another upon points of Whig and Tory, of High Church and Low
Church, which no more concerned them than the long and famous controversy
of strops for razors: while agriculture was wholly discouraged, and
consequently half the farmers and labourers, and poorer tradesmen forced
to beggary or banishment. "Wisdom crieth in the streets: Because I have
called on you; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye
have set at nought all my counsels, and would none of my reproof; I also
will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh."
I have now done with your Memorial, and freely excuse your mistakes, since
you appear to write as a stranger, and as of a country which is left at
liberty to enjoy the benefits of nature, and to make the best of those
advantages which God has given it, in soil, climate, and situation.
MAXIMS CONTROLLED.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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