There was a call of the House of Commons. Members came up from the farthest parts of Ireland. All other business was suspended. Lords and Commons passed a vote, that they would sit till some answer came, and that no power should adjourn them but their own consent. They intimated plainly that the supplies should not be voted till the patent was withdrawn.

Finding the Parliament thus obstinate, and not being on the spot to apply his usual methods of dissolving hostile Parliamentary majorities, Walpole had recourse to cunning. The money was indispensable to him and at the same time he, or those, whom he dared not offend, were resolute not to give way. The King, after three months' delay, wrote to express his regret that the patent had given offence, to promise an enquiry, and to promise also, that if Wood had been found to have broken his engagements, he should be severely punished.

The words were vague, but thrown, as they were, into the form of an apology, the Irish leaders persuaded themselves that they amounted to a confession of defeat; that their expostulation had taken effect ; and that they could now afford to be generous. The two Houses replied, that they were grateful for his majesty's kindness; they trusted that means would be taken immediately to prevent the coin from being put in circulation; and, as a proof of confidence, they voted the supplies for the usual two years. They assumed that the dispute was at an end; and with an understanding that it was not to meet again for business till the autumn of 17:25, and, with mutual compliments and expressions of good will, the Parliament broke up, and the Duke of Grafton sailed for England.

1 'Grafton to Walpole, November 2. MSS. Record Office.
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Rid of his immediate difficulty, and choosing to believe that the opposition had been a mere explosion of unmeaning Parliamentary faction, Walpole now imagined that the course was clear before him, and that he could do as he pleased. The King's promise was observed to the letter. A committee of the Privy Council was appointed to examine a matter which was already determined on. A few bags of the halfpence were made over to Sir Isaac Newton to be analysed; and when it was found that, so far as these specimens were concerned, the terms of the patent had been observed, Sir Isaac's name was paraded to shield a transaction which, whether they were observed or not, was still an abominable fraud. The Committee reported that the new coin was purer than that already in circulation; that there had been no misrepresentation; that Ireland needed an addition to its copper currency; that the King was acting within his undoubted prerogative; that the patent was granted, and that it could not be legally recalled.1

The report was sent to Dublin, with the results of Sir Isaac Newton's investigation. A hope was expressed that the Irish would perceive that they had been unnecessarily alarmed. The issue of halfpence recommenced; and Wood, in an evil hour for himself, was heard to swear that he would force the Irish people to swallow them, whether they liked it or

not.

It was now that the champion of Irish rights appeared on the scene, whose genius has condemned a transaction to an infamous immortality which, but for him, might have been forgotten among the thousand scandals of those anxious days. Since the pro1 Report of the Privy Council, July 24, 1724. MSS. Record Office.

I.

1723

secution of the printers of his 'Address to the People CHAP of Ireland,' Swift had published nothing which could bring him into collision with the Government; not, however, out of any love for Walpole or the Whigs. The Whig policy was hateful to him. Against Walpole he had an unrequited grudge. He had been watching, doubtless, for an opportunity to quit scores with him, and the time was come. Perfectly well acquainted with the secrets of the English Court, and possessed in consequence with a scorn which gave him threefold strength, the Dean of St. Patrick's stepped down into the arena, in the disguise of a Dublin drapier or haberdasher. He laid bare, in a series of letters, the scheme of which Ireland was being made the victim, and covered all the actors in it with a cataract of infamy which no ablution could cleanse. Dealing with unscrupulous men, he was himself far from careful of the exact truth. He wrote like a man in the hands of swindlers, and not particular by what name he called them. In a good cause there was no need to stand on trifles. He could not of course directly attack the Government. The miserable Wood was made the scapegoat, and Walpole was struck at through his side. He advised his countrymen, at all hazards, and at all inconvenience to themselves, not to admit the halfpence among them. He represented Wood, who was a wealthy Wolverhampton iron founder, as a 'vile fellow,' 'a base mechanic,' a speculating wretch, 'who had bought up the old copper in Ireland to make an artificial scarcity.' Wood had undertaken, as a compromise, to limit his first issue to less than half the original quantity: the rest he had promised to keep back till it should be wanted. What security could Ireland find, enquired

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the Drapier, so long as Wood was to be his own judge
of her necessities? 'Let Wood and his crew of
founders and tinkers,' he said, 'coin on till there is
not an old kettle left in the kingdom; coin old leather,
tobacco pipes, clay, street dirt, and call it what he will,
we will not take it. By his own computation we are
to pay three shillings for what is worth but one.
A whole kingdom is in dismay at the threats of one
single diminutive, insignificant mechanic. We are to
be eaten alive by this little arbitrary mock monarch;
devoured alive by a rat. If Mr. Hampden chose
rather to go to prison than pay a few shillings to
Charles the First, I will rather choose to be hanged
than have all my substance taxed at the arbitrary will
and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood.'

Three letters of the terrible Drapier, all in the
same strain, appeared in rapid succession. Already
indignant at the trick which had been played upon
the Parliament, the people were like fuel ready dried
for the fire. The author was recognized notwith-
standing the disguise of the name, and Swift became
the idol of the Dublin populace. Mobs walked in pro-
cession through the streets, carrying Wood's effigy,
a rope to hang him, and a coffin, and a winding sheet.
The Government, alternately bewildered and furious,
knew not which way to turn.
'What would you
have?' wrote the Duke of Newcastle to Lord Midle-
ton; the patentee has a right of property in his pa-
tent, of which nothing but force can deprive him.
The King cannot revoke it. The patentee has com-
plied with his terms, and the copper money is the best
that ever was coined for Ireland" Unreasonable Ire-

1 The Duke of Newcastle to the Lords Justices, October 3, 1724' MSS. Record Office.

land, that refused to be pacified with smooth words! The situation was one of a kind to which the Duke of Grafton was evidently unequal: a stronger hand and a stronger head were required to cope with it. Lord Carteret, then about thirty-seven years old, one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, statesman that Walpole had at his command, was selected, in Grafton's place, to dissolve the Opposition, and to use all means which experience in England had proved successful in such cases: corruption and resolution, adroitness and good dinners, Burgundy,'' closeting,' and 'palaver.'

Carteret went to his work with commendable misgivings. 'I will do my best,' he said; I have had difficult things to do before. The pitcher goes often to the well, and is broken at last; but the proverb frightens me not. If I have the fate of the pitcher, people shall say, I deserved better luck.' He landed on the 23rd of October, a day which was still observed with anniversary solemnities commemorative of the massacre. The Drapier was on the watch for his coming. At the moment of his arrival, the famous fourth letter, just newly issued, was being hawked through the streets. So far Swift had kept clear of politics. He might have been indicted for a libel upon Wood, but he had written nothing on which the state could found a prosecution. He had now deliberately touched a more dangerous chord. The sore point in the connexion between the two kingdoms had been the alleged dependence of Ireland upon England. Ireland with her own Parliament, and her own laws, had claimed to be a free

1 Carteret to the Duke of Newcastle, September 10, 1724.' MSS. Record Office.

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