The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. - Volume 07: Historical and Political Tracts-IrishSwift, Jonathan
General
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. - Volume 07: Historical and Political Tracts-Irish
Swift, Jonathan
Ireland -- Politics and government -- 18th century
There is a cry, peculiar to this City, which I do not remember to have
been used in London, or at least, not in the same terms that it has been
practised by both parties, during each of their power; but, very
unjustly by the Tories. While these were at the helm, they grew daily
more and more impatient to put all true Whigs and Hanoverians out of
employments. To effect which, they hired certain ordinary fellows, with
large baskets on their shoulders, to call aloud at every house, "Dirt to
carry out;" giving that denomination to our whole party, as if they
would signify, that the kingdom could never be cleansed, till we were
swept from the earth like rubbish. But, since that happy turn of times,
when we were so miraculously preserved by just an inch, from Popery,
slavery, massacre, and the Pretender, I must own it prudence in us,
still to go on with the same cry, which hath ever since been so
effectually observed, that the true political dirt is wholly removed,
and thrown on its proper dunghills, there to corrupt, and be no more
heard of.
But, to proceed to other enormities: Every person who walks the streets,
must needs observe the immense number of human excrements at the doors
and steps of waste houses, and at the sides of every dead wall; for
which the disaffected party have assigned a very false and malicious
cause. They would have it, that these heaps were laid there privately by
British fundaments, to make the world believe, that our Irish vulgar do
daily eat and drink; and, consequently, that the clamour of poverty
among us, must be false, proceeding only from Jacobites and Papists.
They would confirm this, by pretending to observe, that a British anus
being more narrowly perforated than one of our own country; and many of
these excrements upon a strict view appearing copple crowned, with a
point like a cone or pyramid, are easily distinguished from the
Hibernian, which lie much flatter, and with lest continuity. I
communicated this conjecture to an eminent physician, who is well versed
in such profound speculations; and at my request was pleased to make
trial with each of his fingers, by thrusting them into the anus of
several persons of both nations, and professed he could find no such
difference between them as those ill-disposed people allege. On the
contrary, he assured me, that much the greater number of narrow cavities
were of Hibernian origin. This I only mention to shew how ready the
Jacobites are to lay hold of any handle to express their malice against
the government. I had almost forgot to add, that my friend the physician
could, by smelling each finger, distinguish the Hibernian excrement from
the British, and was not above twice mistaken in an hundred experiments;
upon which he intends very soon to publish a learned dissertation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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