amount of £108.000, for which one William Wood had taken the contract and received the patent. Here was the crying griev pendence of Ireland upon the crown of It is necessary that the history of this transaction should be taken out of the His Grace the lord-lieutenant, in his domain of rhetoric, and established upon a speech to that Parliament, at the close of basis of fact. A great scarcity and need the session, in order to console them for of copper money was felt in Ireland; and the loss of their favourite bill, gave them this is not denied by the dean. William to understand, "that it miscarried merely Wood, whom Swift always calls, "hardby its not having been brought into the wareman and bankrupt," but who was, in House before the session was so far ad- fact, a large proprietor, and owner or vanced." And after earnestly recommend-renter of several extensive iron works in ing to them, in their several stations, the England,* proposed to contract for the care and preservation of the public peace, supply needed, and his proposal was ache added, that, in his opinion, that cepted. The national, or rather colonial, would be greatly promoted by the vigorous jealousy was at once inflamed; and alexecution of the laws against popish ready, long before Dean Swift's first letter priests; and that he would contribute his on the subject, the two Houses had voted part towards the prevention of that grow- addresses to the crown, accusing the ing evil, by giving proper directions that patentee of fraud, affirming that the terms such persons only should be put into the of the patent had been infringed as to the commissions of the peace as had dis- quality of the coin, and that its circulatinguished themselves by their steady tion would be highly prejudicial to adherence to the Protestant interest.” the revenue and commerce of the The Commons, with great exaggeration, declared that even had the terms of the patent been complied with, the nation would have suffered a loss of at least 150 per cent.; and indeed the whole clamour rested on partial or ignorant misrepresentation. Wood's coin was as good as any other copper coinage of that day; and the assertion of its opponents (repeated by Swift), that the intrinsic was no more than one-eighth of the nominal value of the metal, must be taken with great caution. If this assertion had even been true, the matter would have been of little consequence, because when coinage descends below gold and silver, it comes to be only a kind of counters for the conSwift and Wood's Copper.-Drapier's Letters.- venience of exchange, deriving its value Clain of Independence. Primate Boulter-from the sanction of the government which Swift popular with the Catholics.-His feeling towards Catholics-Desolation of the country. Everybody knew what that meant-in-country. creased vigilance in hunting down clergymen, and in discovering and appropriating the property of laymen; nor is their any reason to think that his Grace's exhortations were addresscd to unwilling cars. CHAPTER VIIL 1723-1727. Rack-rents. Absenteeism.- Great Distress.- issues it; and being receivable in payment of taxes, it has for all its purposes the whole value which it denotes on its face.† From the specimens, however, of Wood's and fac-similes of which are given in some editions of Swift's works, it is clear that the coins were of a goodly size, and with a fair impression; and by an assay made at the mint, under Sir Isaac Newton and his two associates, it was proved that in weight and in fineness these coins rather exceeded than fell short of the conditions WHILE the Irish Parliament was so earn-halfpence preserved in the British Museum, estly engaged in their measures against popish priests, Dean Swift, who had lived in great quiet for three or four years, writing Gulliver's Travels in the country, suddenly plunged impetuously into the tumult of Irish politics. His indignation was inflamed to the highest pitch-not by the ferocity of the legislature against Catholics, but by Wood's copper halfpence. The country, he thought, was on the verge of ruin, not by reason of the tempest of intolerance, rapacity, fraud, and cruelty, which raged over it on every side, but by reason of a certain copper coinage to the Coxe. Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole. The present base coinage of cent and threecent pieces in the United States is an example of this. It is intrinsically of no value at all, being composed of the vilest of metal; yet it answers all the purposes of small change, without injury to anybody. of the patent. However, the clamour was so violent, that the collectors of the king's customs very honestly refused to take them, and so did almost everybody else," says Swift in his first letter of "M. B. Drapier." So that the crusade against Wood and his halfpence was already in full progress before the dean wrote a word on the subject. It is observable further, that this matter concerning Wood and his coinage did not really touch the great question of Irish national independence, or the insolent claim of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland; because the matter of coining money belongs to the royal prerogative; and not one man of the English colony in Ireland, not Swift himself, pretended to question the authority of the King of England. In short, no more trifling occasion ever produced so brilliant and memorable a result. It seemed to be but an occasion, no matter now silly, that Swift wanted. Any peg would do to hang his essays upon; and ne used the affair of Wood, as Rabelais had used the legend of Gargantua and Pantagruel, to introduce under cover of much senseless ribaldry, the gravest opinions on politics and government. Early in 1724 appeared the first letter, written in the character of a Dublin shopkeeper. It was soon followed by six others, besides letters to William Wood himself, "Observations on the Report of the Lords of the Council," Letter to the whole People of Ireland," and many ballads and songs which were calculated for the Dublin ballad-singers. These productions were remarkable not only for their fierce sarcasm and denunciation directed against Wood himself, but for the constantly insinuated, and sometimes plainly expressed, assertion of the national right of Ireland (namely, of the English colony in Ireland) to manage her own affairs. This, in fact, was always in his mind. "For my own part," observes M. B. Drapier, "who am but one man, of obscure origin, I do solemnly declare in the presence of Almighty God, that I will suffer the most ignominious and torturing death rather than submit to receive this accursed coin, or any other that is liable to the same objections, until they shall be forced upon me by a law of my own country; and if that shall ever happen, I will transport myself into some foreign land, and eat the bread of poverty among a free people. Indeed, while he seems to * Report of the Committee of the Privy Council. Swift replied that Wood must have furnished the committee with coins specially made for examination; which is quite possible. be directing all the torrent of his indignation against the unlucky hardware-man, he very plainly personifies in him the relentless domination of England, and really labours to excite, not personal wrath against Wood, but patriotic resentment against the British Government. A very admirable example, both of his style of denunciation, and of his exquisite art in insinuating his leading idea amidst a perfect deluge of witty ribaldry, is seen in this excellent passage. "I am very sensible," says the worthy Drapier, “that such a work as I have undertaken might have worthily employed a much better pen; but when a house is attempted to be robbed, it often happens that the weakest in the family runs first to stop the door. All my assistance was some informations from an eminent person, whereof I am afraid I have spoiled a few by endeavouring to make them of a piece with my own productions, and the rest I was not able to manage. I was in the case of David, who could not move in the armour of Saul; and therefore chose to attack this uncircumcised Philistine (Wood I mean) with a sling and a stone. And I may say, for Wood's honour, a well as my own, that he resembles Goliath in many circumstances very applicable to the present purpose. For Goliath had a helmet of brass on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was 5000 shekels of brass; and he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. In short, he was like Mr. Wood, all over brass, and he defied the armies of the living God. Goliath's conditions of combat were likewise the same with those of Mr. Wood: if he prevail against us, then shall we be his servants; but if it happens that I prevail over him, I renounce the other part of the condition. He shall never be a servant of mine, for I do not think him fit to be trusted in any honest man's shop." But in the fourth letter of M. B. Drapier," Dean Swift disclosed and developed without reserve his real sentiments, which, he says, "have often swelled in my breast," on the absolute right of the Irish nation (that is, of the English colony there) to govern itself independently of the English Parliament. On this point he thoroughly adopts and maintains the whole doctrine of Mr. Molyneux ("an English gentleman born here"), and de nounces the usurpation of the London Parliament in assuming to bind Ireland by their laws. The proof that Swift, in affirming the rights of the Irish nation, meant only the English colony, is seen clearly enough in a passage of this very letter. "One great merit I am sure we have which those of English birth can have no pretence to that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England, for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate-the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent-a ruined trade-a house of peers without jurisdiction almost an incapacity for all employments, and the dread of Wood's halfpence." Rising and warming as he proceeds, he at length fairly declares, "In this point we have nothing to do with English ministers, and I should be sorry to leave it in their power to redress this grievance or to enforce it, for the report of the committee has given me a surfeit. The remedy is wholly in your own hands; and therefore I have digressed a little in order to refresh and continue that spirit so seasonably raised among you, and to let you see that by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England." in popularity in Ireland, he became a more intolerable thorn in the side of the king's servants in that country, and especially of Primate Boulter. Boulter was appointed Primate in this very year, and one of the earliest letters published in his elaborate correspondence shows the extreme uneasiness with which that devoted servant of the English interest and doer of "the king's business" regarded the spirit aroused by the common resentment of all the people of all religions and races against the copper of Wood. He says in this letter: "I find by my own and others' inquirics that the people of every religion, country, and party here, are alike set against Wood's halfpence, and that their agreement in this has had a very unhappy influence on the state of this nation, by bringing on intimacies between Papists and Jacobites and the Whigs, who before had no correspondence with them: so that 'tis questionable whether, if there were occasion, justices of the peace could be found who would be strict in disarming Papists." For the next eighteen years For printing this letter, Harding, the this Primate Boulter was the real goverprinter, was prosecuted; but when the in-nor of Ireland. Thirteen times in that dictment against him was sent up to the period he was one of the lords justices, Dublin grand-jury, every man of them had and as he had the full confidence of Walin his hand a copy of another letter, en-pole, and was fully imbued with that titled Seasonable Advice to the Grand-ininister's well-known principle (the prinJury," &c., which it seems they took to heart, for they threw out the bill. A proclamation was then issued from the Castle offering a reward for discovery of the author, and signed by Lord Carteret, then viceroy. Everybody knew the author; but public spirit in Dublin was then so high and inflamed that the government could not venture to arrest the Dean. On the very day the proclamation was issued, he publicly taunted Carteret at the levée with thus persecuting a poor, honest tradesman, as he called "the Drapier;" adding, "I suppose your lordship expects a statue in copper for this service you have done to Wood." In short, the cause of the halfpence was utterly lost: nobody Whether Swift so intended or not, he would take them or touch them; the En- became, in fact, highly popular with the glish government had to withdraw the Catholics of the kingdom. Not that he patent; William Wood turned his old ever spoke of them without disdain and copper to some other use in the hardware aversion. "The Popish priests," says he, line; but received from the English Go-"are all registered, and without pervernment a compensation in the shape of mission (which I hope will not be granted) a pension of three thousand pounds for they can have no successors." (Letter eight years.* From this time the Dean was the most popular man in Ireland; he became the idol of the shopkeepers and tradespeople. The Drapier was a sign over hundreds of shops; the Drapier was an honoured toast at all merry-makings; and precisely as he grew • Coxe, Life of Walpole. ciple, namely, that all could be done by intrigue and corruption), we find him really dictating to successive viceroys of Ireland, and also warning the English Government from time to time who were the persons in Ireland who deserved encouragement and employment as the "king's servants," and who they were that merited reprobation as the "king's enemies," who obstructed him in doing the king's business. It is needless to observe that he became instantly a bitter enemy to Dean Swift, and more than once cautioned the ministry against whatever representations might come from that quarter.* concerning Sacramental Test.) In short, whenever he does allude to them at all, it is always with a view of intimating that he has no appeal to make to them, not regarding them as a part of the nation. In the famous prosecuted letter itself—al * Letter dated 10th Feb., 1725, from the Primate to Duke of Newcastle. "Far from our debtors, Not seen by your betters." but before he went Primate Boulter wrote The next year Swift went to England, illustrates the vigilance of that prelate in to Sir Robert Walpole a letter which well the king's service, and also the estimation in which he held Dr. Swift. He says, though it is addressed "To the Whole Lough Ramor, the conversation of Stella, People of Ireland"-he takes occasion and the "blessings of a country life," thus to repel one of the assertions of which he describes to be Wood:-"That the Papists have entered into an association against his coin, although it be notoriously known that they never once offered to stir in the matter." In his address, then, to the "Whole People," he speaks of the Papists as "they." But notwithstanding this, Catholic farmers had wool and grain to sell they also had their daily traffic, and if the introduction of that perilous copper was The general report is that Dean Swift to be so fatal to the Protestants, it could designs for England in a little time, and not be good for them. Moreover, the bold we do not question his endeavours to misassertion of Ireland's right to indepen-represent his majesty's friends here wherdence pleased them well. They knew, it ever he finds an opportunity. But he is is true, that they were not for the present so well known, as well as the disturbances considered as active citizens; yet being he has been the fomenter of in this kingfive to one, they also felt that if the dom, that we are under no fear of his heavy pressure of British domination were being able to disserve any of his majesty's once taken off, they or their children could faithful servants by anything that is ..ot fail to assert for themselves a recog-known to come from him; but we could nized place in a new Irish nation. Up to the present date, the Irish Catholic free * holders voted at elections to Parliament (though their suffrage was cramped by oaths, and they could only vote for a Protestant candidate), and they could still make their weight felt in the scale either of Whig or Tory, either in favour of the king's servants or the king's enemies, as Dr. Boulter called them respectively. No wonder, therefore, that the primate began to view with great alarm a community of feeling arising between the Catholics and either of the Protestant parties, and he soon cast about for a remedy, and found one. wish some eye were had to what shall be attempted on your side the water." No further political event of much conshort remainder of the reign of George I. sequence occurred in Ireland during the All accounts of that period represent the country as sinking lower in misery and distress. Swift's graphic tracts and letthe desolation of the rural districts. ters give a painfully vivid picture of He laments often the wanton and utter destruction of timber, which had left bare and hungry-looking great regions that had but lately waved with ancient woods. New proprietors, under the various confiscations, had always felt, in those Dean Swift was never openly attimes of revolutions, that their possestacked by the primate, but he had sions were held by a precarious tenure; been for some years subjected to the there might at any moment be a new conspy-system, which is always SO essential an arm of English goverment as the woods would bring in their value at fiscation, or a new resumption; therefore, in Ireland, and had found it necessary to use great precautions in securing his once they were felled remorselessly, and manuscripts, as well as his ordinary letters, often sold at a mere trifle for the sake of from the vigilant espionage of the governgetting ready money. It has been already ment. When Wood's patent was with-seen that "the commissioners of confiscated estates in King William's time* drawn, and all apprehensions were over concerning the half pennies, he was de-speak of this destruction of the forests as sirous to withdraw for a while from the capital and from the neighbourhood of Dr. Boulter's detectives, and went to the quiet retreat of Quilca, in the County Cavan, where his friend Dr. Sheridan had a house. Here he finished "Gulliver," which had been suspended for a while, and prepared it for the press; enjoying, by the shore of Primate Boulter writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: There are probably in this kingdom five Papists at least to one Protestant." This was in the year 1727. + Roscoe's Life of Swift; Sir Walter Scott's Life. a grevious loss to the nation. They estimate that on one estate in Kerry trees to the value of £20,000 had been cut down or destroyed; on another estate £27,000 worth; and in some cases they say, "Those on whom the confiscated estates been so greedy to seize upon the most have been bestowed, or their agents, have trifling profits, that large trees have been cut down and sold for sixpence each.” The consequence of all this wanton waste See their report at the end of MacGeoghegan's History was soon lamentably observable in the nakedness of this once well-wooded island, where in Dean Swift's time it would have been impossible, as he tells us, to find timber either for shipbuilding or for the houses of the people. eries of the people by cooking and eating the children of the poor--a piece of the fiercest sarcasm, steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul; which, however-so grave is the irony-has been sometimes taken by foreign writers as a serious project of relief. yet its effect has been perpetuated so thoroughly that the Irish do not now, as they did then, even manufacture woollen cloth for home consumption. In the year 1723 a petition was presented to Parliament from the woollen drapers, clothiers, and weavers The condition of the farmers and of Dublin, setting forth the decay and allabouring people was extremely hard in most destruction of their industry, the the latter years of this reign. As Catho- sore distress and privations of thousands lics were subjected to severe restrictions of families that had once lived comfortably if they lived in trading or manufacturing by prosecuting these trades, and asking for towns, their only resource was to become inquiry and relief. But an Irish Partenants for short terms, or at will, to an liament, absolutely controlled by an Engalien and hostile race of landlords, and lish Privy Council, was quite incapable of this at most oppressive rents. "Another applying any remedy; so the affairs of great calamity," says Swift,* "is the ex-trade had fallen from bad to worse, until orbitant raising of the rent of lands. at the close of this reign there was immiUpon the determination of all leases made nent danger of a destructive famine-that before the year 1690, a gentleman thinks scourge which foreign domination has he has but indifferently improved his made so familiar to Ireland. It was in estate if he has only doubled his rent-roll. 1729 that Swift wrote and published his Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent;"Modest Proposal" for relieving the misleases granted but for a small term of years; tenants tied down to hard conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to the best advantage, by the certainty they have of the rent being raised on the expiration of their lease proportionably to the improvements they shall make. Thus it is that honest industry is restrained; the farmer is a slave to his landlord; and it is well if he can cover his family with a coarse homespun frieze." Another of the evils complained of by the Dean is the prevalence of absenteeism, which carried over to England, according to his estimate, half a million sterling of Irish money per annum, with no return. Another still was the propensity of proprietors to turn great tracts of land into sheep pastures, which, of course, drove away tenants, increased the wretched competition for farms, and still more increased rents. It was this which made Swift exclaim, with his bitter humour, "Ajax was mad when he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies; but we shall never be sober till we are of the same way of thinking." To all these miseries must be added the decay of trade and com. merce, caused directly by the jealous and greedy commercial policy of England; and this grievance pressed quite as heavily upon the Protestant as on the Catholic. So uniform has been the system of English rule in Ireland, that the description of it given a century and a half ago fits with great accuracy and with even heavier aggravations at this day. The absentee rents are now ten times as great in amount as they were then; and, although the prohibition against exporting woollen cloth is now no longer in force, • "The present miserable state of Ireland." King George died on the 11th of June, 1727, just after settling the preliminaries of a peace with the Emperor and Spain, which was shortly afterwards signed at Seville (but to the exclusion of the Emperor) by the Ministers of France, England and Spain. Thus our exiles on the continent were deprived for a time of the pleasure of meeting their hereditary enemies on the field. But further opportunities were happily to arise for them. CHAPTER IX. 1727-1741. Lord Carteret lord-lieutenant.-Primate Boulter ruler of Ireland.-His policy.-Catholic Address.-Not noticed.-Papists deprived of elective franchise. Insolence of the "Ascendency."--Famine. Emigration-Dorset lord-lieutenant.-Agita tion of Dissenters.-Sacramental Test.-Swift's virulence against the Dissenters.-Boulter's policy to extirpate Papists.-Rage against the Catholics. Debates on money bills-"Patriot Party." -Duke of Devonshire lord-lieutenant-Corruption. Another famine.-Berkely.-English commercial policy in Ireland. THE accession of George II. occasioned no great excitement in Ireland. Lord Carteret was continued as lord-lieutenant, but the corrupt and domineering churchman, Primate Boulter, a fit instrument of |