In the composition of the "Letters" Swift had set himself a task peculiarly fitting to his genius. Those qualities of mind which enabled him to enter into the habits of the lives of footmen, servants, and lackeys found an even more congenial freedom of play here. His knowledge of human nature was so profound that he instinctively touched the right keys, playing on the passions of the common people with a deftness far surpassing in effect the acquired skill of the mere master of oratory. He ordered his arguments and framed their language, so that his readers responded with almost passionate enthusiasm to the call he made upon them. Allied to his gift of intellectual sympathy with his kind was a consummate ability in expression, into which he imparted the fullest value of the intended meaning. His thought lost nothing in its statement. Writing as he did from the point of view of a tradesman, to the shopkeepers, farmers, and common people of Ireland, his business was to speak with them as if he were one of them. He had already laid bare their grievances caused by the selfish legislation of the English Parliament, which had ruined Irish manufactures; he had written grimly of the iniquitous laws which had destroyed the woollen trade of the country; he had not forgotten the condition of the people as he saw it on his journeys from Dublin to Cork--a condition which he was later to reveal in the most terrible of his satirical tracts--and he realized with almost personal anguish the degradation of the people brought about by the rapacity and selfishness of a class which governed with no thought of ultimate consequences, and with no apparent understanding of what justice implied. It was left for him to precipitate his private opinion and public spirit in such form as would arouse the nation to a sense of self-respect, if not to a pitch of resentment. The "Drapier's Letters" was the reagent that accomplished both. * * * * * The editor takes this opportunity to express his thanks and obligations to Mr. G.R. Dennis, to Mr. W. Spencer Jackson, to the late Colonel F.R. Grant, to Mr. C. Litton Falkiner of Killiney, and to Mr. O'Donoghue of Dublin. His acknowledgment is here also made to Mr. Strickland, of the National Gallery of Ireland, to whose kindness and learning he is greatly indebted. TEMPLE SCOTT. NEW YORK, _March_, 1903. CONTENTS LETTER I. TO THE SHOPKEEPERS, TRADESMEN, FARMERS, AND COMMON-PEOPLE OF IRELAND LETTER II. TO MR. HARDING THE PRINTER THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE LORDS OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY-COUNCIL, IN RELATION TO MR. WOOD'S HALFPENCE AND FARTHINGS, ETC. LETTER III. TO THE NOBILITY AND GENTRY OF THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND LETTER IV. TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE OF IRELAND SEASONABLE ADVICE TO THE GRAND JURY, CONCERNING THE BILL PREPARING AGAINST THE PRINTER OF THE DRAPIER'S FOURTH LETTER LETTER V. TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR MIDDLETON