BOOK

IV.

172

country; under the same sovereign with England,
it might be; but still free. If England, for her
own purposes, chose to alter her succession; to expel
one King and choose another; Ireland, unless with
her own consent, held herself entitled to hold her old
allegiance. She was vain of her supposed loyalty to
Charles the First. She had rejected William and ad-
hered to James, and had insisted that she was within
her rights in doing so. By the 9th of the 1st of
William and Mary, the English Parliament had re-
plied by a statutory declaration that the kingdom of
Ireland was annexed and united to the imperial crown
of England, and was subject to the English sovereign
whoever he might be. The connecting link between
them was not the person of the king or queen. The
smaller country was attached to the larger as an
inseparable appendage; and it was in virtue of this
statute that the war of 1691 was regarded and
treated as rebellion. The resistance of Ireland to
the halfpence had been described as unbecoming in
a dependent kingdom. The Drapier,
The Drapier, so choosing his
words as to combine affected loyalty to the House
of Hanover with loyalty to Irish liberty, and mak-
ing it peculiarly difficult to construe his language
into treason, yet gave voice to the inmost thoughts
of Irish nationality, in denouncing the alleged de-
pendence. Next under God,' he said in this fourth
letter, I depend only on the King and on the laws
of my country. I am so far from depending on the
people of England, that, if ever they rebelled against
their sovereign, I would take arms against them at
my sovereign's command: and if such a rebellion
should prove successful, so as to fix the Pretender on
the throne of England, I would venture to transgress

that statute so far as to lose every drop of my blood to hinder him from being King of Ireland.'

CHAP.
I.

With these words, street and square were ringing 1724 when Carteret arrived in Dublin. Boys were standing at every corner, bawling out the last letter of the Drapier. The 'fly sheets' were being sold to eager buyers within the gates of Dublin Castle.' Without so much as an hour to collect himself after his voyage, the new Viceroy had at once to address himself to the battle. There was no time for dinners and Burgundy. To try,' as he said, 'the tempers of the leading people,' he summoned the late Lords Justices, the Privy Council, and the judges. He insisted on the lawfulness of the patent, the folly of the objections, and the determination of the Government not to allow itself to be insulted. The meaning of the movement,' he said, 'was now explained. It was not to escape the miserable halfpence. The Irish people intended to shake off their allegiance, and their dependence upon England. They would find themselves mistaken. He should immediately offer a reward for the discovery of the writer of the letter, and instruct the law officers to prosecute the printer.'

Many years had passed since words like these had been heard in Dublin Castle. Pity only that, when spoken, they were spoken on the wrong occasion. A violent debate followed. The Lords Justices, Midleton, and Speaker Conolly supported the Viceroy. The Archbishop of Dublin,' Swift's constant friend, and the Bishop of Elphin,2 said coldly that such highhanded measures would fail of their object. A prosecution would add to the discontent, and endanger the

1 King, now a very old man.

2 Godwin, an Englishman, who had been Archdeacon of Oxford.

-BOOK
IV.

1724

peace of the realm. Under the existing circumstances no jury would find a bill.

Carteret fiercely replied, that the peace of the kingdom should be kept.' The Chief Baron' said that things were in a bad way, if the board were to be intimidated, and the laws suspended, from a fear that sedition should be justified by a jury.' After a stormy discussion of six hours, a majority were brought to consent that a reward of 300l. should be offered for the detection of the Drapier. But the consent was unwillingly wrung from them. The entire Council agreed in condemning the halfpence. They required, and the Viceroy found himself unable to refuse, that the Proclamation should be directed solely against 'seditious and scandalous paragraphs' in the letter, and should contain nothing which could be construed into an approval of Wood. Even with these precautions, Archbishop King declared, on leaving the room, that the Viceroy would have reason to repent so precipitate a resolution.' 2

6

Carteret was receiving an Irish welcome to his uneasy office. Like so many other statesmen before and after him, he had brought with him a conviction that Ireland required only a firm government; that authority had only to assert itself, in order to be obeyed. Had he remembered that a government must be just as well as firm, he would have brought the key to unlock the riddle with him; but with this remembrance he would scarcely have come to Ireland at all on his present errand. Unjust violence, alternating with affected repentance for past oppression,

1 Bernard Hale, rewarded afterwards by a seat on the English bench.

2 'Carteret to Newcastle, October 28. MSS. Record Office.

and childish prate about Irish ideas: this has been the eternal seesaw in the English administrations of the unlucky country. Who but Cromwell has ever tried to rule her by true ideas?

The Archbishop, with forty years' experience of public life in Dublin, understood the situation better than Carteret. Two days after he came privately to the Castle, and, after talking in what the Viceroy called a very extraordinary manner,' told him that 'the Drapier had some thoughts of declaring himself, and might safely put himself on the country and stand his trial.' Carteret knew who the Drapier was as well as the Archbishop, and was aware that he had a dangerous person to deal with. But he had not yet dreamt of yielding. 'No one,' he said, 'however considerable, was of weight enough to stand a matter of such a nature. If the author desired the glory of a prosecution, he might apply to the Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the libel contained treason, and his duty was to bring the writer of it to justice.'

6

You will tell the King,' Carteret wrote in sending information of what had passed to the Duke of Newcastle, that if the author's boldness should be so great as the Archbishop says, I am determined to summon him before the Council; and, though I should not be supported by them, to order him to be taken into custody, to refuse his bail, and keep him till I know his majesty's pleasure. The Chief Baron thinks that if we do act it must be with the utmost rigour. Lord Shannon tells me the chief citizens of Dublin are in a strange humour. Dr. Swift is said to be the author, but it will be hard to prove, though many think he may be spirited up to own it.'1

1 'Carteret to Newcastle, October 31. MSS. Record Office.

BOOK

IV.

The haughtier Carteret's attitude the fuller became the of humiliation which in the end he was comcup 1724 pelled to drink. All Dublin, from highest to lowest, was openly defiant. The Proclamation was issued, but the criers dared not carry it into the streets. A declaration against the halfpence, signed by several of the Council, was printed on large sheets, and hung up framed in the most public parts of the town. A hackney coachman had an altercation with an officer about a fare. A mob collected; the coachman declared that the gentleman had offered to pay him in Wood's money,' and the officer was hustled and beaten. The Corporation presented Swift with the freedom of the city in a gold box. The story of the deliverance of Jonathan was made into a recitative and chanted about the streets:

เ

'Then Saul said to Jonathan, What hast thou done. God do so, and more also, for thou shalt surely die, Jonathan. And the people said to Saul, Shall Jonathan die who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid; as the Lord liveth there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath wrought with God this day. So the people rescued Jonathan that he died not.'1

In England the Lord Lieutenant's vigour gave supreme satisfaction. The King said, that even 'if Swift came forward his acknowledgment would make no difference either in the crime, or in the manner in which it should be punished. The Lord Lieutenant should proceed according to law.'2 The law itself, justice itself, which the sentiment of Ireland was de

1 'Thomas Tickell to Secretary Delafaye, November 1.' MSS. Record Office.

2 Newcastle to Carteret, November 5. Ibid.