THE PRESENT MISERABLE STATE OF IRELAND.
This letter was addressed to Sir Robert Walpole on Swift’s return to Ireland in 1726 before his final rupture with the Premier the following year. Swift endeavoured to combat the English prejudices of the minister on the mode of managing Ireland, seeking the emancipation of his country rather than personal advancement. Here he seems to assume the character of the Drapier besides adding his initials.
Sir,
By the last packets I had the favour of yours, and am surprised that you should apply to a person so ill-qualified as I am, for a full and impartial account of the state of our trade. I have always lived as retired as possible; I have carefully avoided the perplexed honour of city-offices; I have never minded anybody’s business but my own; upon all which accounts, and several others, you might easily have found among my fellow-citizens, persons more capable to resolve the weighty questions you put to me than I can pretend to be. But being entirely at leisure, even at this season of the year, when I used to have scarce time sufficient to perform the necessary offices of life, I will endeavour to comply with your requests, cautioning you not implicitly to rely upon what I say, excepting what belongs to that branch of trade in which I am more immediately concerned.
The Irish trade is, at present, in the most deplorable condition that can be imagined; to remedy it, the causes of its languishment must be inquired into. But as those causes (you may assure yourself) will not be removed, you may look upon it as a thing past hope of recovery.
The first and greatest shock our trade received was from an act passed in the reign of King William, in the Parliament of England, prohibiting the exportation of wool manufactured in Ireland, an act (as the event plainly shows) fuller of greediness than good policy; an act as beneficial to France and Spain, as it has been destructive to England and Ireland. At the passing of this fatal act, the condition of our trade was glorious and flourishing, though no way interfering with the English; we made no broadcloths above 6s. per yard; coarse druggets, bays and shalloons, worsted damasks, strong draught-works, slight half-works, and gaudy stuffs, were the only products of our looms: these were partly consumed by the meanest of our people, and partly sent to the northern nations, from which we had in exchange timber, iron, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, and hard dollars. At the time the current money of Ireland was foreign silver, a man could hardly receive 100l., without finding the coin of all the northern powers, and every prince of the empire among it.
This money was returned into England for fine cloths silks, &c., for our own wear, for rent, for coals, for hardware, and all other English manufactures, and in a great measure supplied the London merchants with foreign silver for exportation.
The repeated clamours of the English weavers produced this act, so destructive to themselves and us.
They looked with envious eyes upon our prosperity, and complained of being undersold by us in those commodities which themselves did not deal in. At their instances the act was passed, and we lost our profitable northern trade. Have they got it? No; surely you have found out they have ever since declined in the trade they so happily possessed? You shall find (if I am rightly informed) towns without one loom in them, which subsisted entirely upon the woollen manufactory before the passing of this unhappy bill; and I will try if I can give the true reasons for the decay of their trade, and our calamities.
Three parts in four of the inhabitants of that district of the town where I dwell were English manufacturers, whom either misfortunes in trade, little petty debts contracted through idleness, or the pressures of a numerous family, had driven into our cheap country. These were employed in working up our coarse wool, while the finest was sent into England. Several of these had taken the children of the native Irish apprentices to them, who being humbled by the forfeiture of upward of three millions by the Revolution, were obliged to stoop to a mechanic industry. Upon the passing of this bill, we were obliged to dismiss thousands of these people from our service. Those who had settled their affairs returned home, and overstocked England with workmen; those whose debts were unsatisfied went to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where they met with good encouragement, whereby the natives, having got a firm footing in the trade, being acute fellows, soon became as good workmen as any we have, and supply the foreign manufactories with a constant recruit of artisans; our island lying much more under pasture than any in Europe. The foreigners (notwithstanding all the restrictions the English Parliament has bound us up with) are furnished with the greatest quantity of our choicest wool. I need not tell you, sir, that a custom-house oath is held as little sacred here as in England, or that it is common for masters of vessels to swear themselves bound for one of the English wool-ports, and unload in France or Spain. By this means the trade in those ports is, in a great measure, destroyed, and we were obliged to try our hands at finer works, having only our own consumption to depend upon; and I can assure you we have, in several kinds of narrow goods, even exceeded the English, and I believe we shall in a few years more, be able to equal them in broadcloths; but this you may depend upon, that scarce the tenth part of English goods are now imported, of what used to be before the famous act.
The only manufactured wares we are allowed to export, are linen cloth and linen yarn, which are marketable only in England; the rest of our commodities are wool, restrained to England, and raw hides, skins, tallow, beef, and butter. Now these are things for which the northern nations have no occasion; we are therefore obliged, instead of carrying woollen goods to their markets, and bringing home money, to purchase their commodities.
In France, Spain, and Portugal, our wares are more valuable, though it must be owned, our fraudulent trade in wool is the best branch of our commerce; from hence we get wines, brandy, and fruit, very cheap, and in great perfection; so that though England has constrained us to be poor, they have given us leave to be merry. From these countries we bring home moydores, pistoles, and louisdores, without which we should scarce have a penny to turn upon.
To England we are allowed to send nothing but linen cloth, yarn, raw hides, skins, tallow, and wool. From thence we have coals, for which we always pay ready money, India goods, English woollen and silks, tobacco, hardware, earthenware, salt, and several other commodities. Our exportations to England are very much overbalanced by our importations; so that the course of exchange is generally too high, and people choose rather to make their remittances to England in specie, than by a bill, and our nation is perpetually drained of its little running cash.
Another cause of the decay of trade, scarcity of money, and swelling of exchange, is the unnatural affectation of our gentry to reside in and about London. Their rents are remitted to them, and spent there. The countryman wants employment from them; the country shopkeeper wants their custom. For this reason he can’t pay his Dublin correspondent readily, nor take off a great quantity of his wares. Therefore the Dublin merchant can’t employ the artisan, nor keep up his credit in foreign markets.
I have discoursed some of these gentlemen, persons esteemed for good sense, and demanded a reason for this, their so unaccountable proceeding—expensive to them for the present, ruinous to their country, and destructive to the future value of their estates—and find all their answers summed up under three heads, curiosity, pleasure, and loyalty to King George. The two first excuses deserve no answer; let us try the validity of the third. Would not loyalty be much better expressed by gentlemen staying in their respective counties, influencing their dependents by their examples, saving their own wealth, and letting their neighbours profit by their necessary expenses, thereby keeping them from misery and its unavoidable consequence, discontent? Or is it better to flock to London, be lost in a crowd, kiss the King’s hand, and take a view of the royal family? The seeing of the royal house may animate their zeal for it; but other advantages I know not. What employment have any of our gentlemen got by their attendance at Court, to make up to them their expenses? Why, about forty of them have been created peers, and a little less than a hundred of them baronets and knights. For these excellent advantages, thousands of our gentry have squeezed their tenants, impoverished the trader, and impaired their own fortunes! Another great calamity is the exorbitant raising of the rents of lands. Upon the determination of all leases made before the year 1690, a gentleman thinks he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has only doubled his rent-roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent—leases 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 their rent being raised on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the improvements they shall make. Thus is honest industry restrained; the farmer is a slave to his landlord; ’tis well if he can cover his family with a coarse, home-spun frieze. The artisan has little dealings with him; yet he is obliged to take his provisions from him at an extravagant price, otherwise the farmer cannot pay his rent.
The proprietors of lands keep great part of them in their own hands for sheep-pasture; and there are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed, if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire’s dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation, on condition of being as very slaves as any in America. What can be more deplorable than to behold wretches starving in the midst of plenty?
We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find them employed; but then we don’t consider they have nothing to do.
Sir William Temple, in his excellent remarks on the United Provinces, inquires, why Holland, which has the fewest and worst ports and commodities of any nation in Europe, should abound in trade, and Ireland, which has the most and best of both, should have none? This great man attributes this surprising accident to the natural aversion man has for labour; who will not be persuaded to toil and fatigue himself for the superfluities of life throughout the week, when he may provide himself with all necessary subsistence by the labour of a day or two. But, with due submission to Sir William’s profound judgment, the want of trade with us is rather owing to the cruel restraints we lie under, than to any disqualifications whatsoever in our inhabitants. I have not, sir, for these thirty years past, since I was concerned in trade (the greatest part of which time distresses have been flowing in upon us), ever observed them to swell so suddenly to such a height as they have done within these few months. Our present calamities are not to be represented; you can have no notion of them without beholding them. Numbers of miserable objects crowd our doors, begging us to take their wares at any price, to prevent their families from immediate starving. We cannot part with our money to them, both because we know not when we shall have vent for our goods, and as there are no debts paid, we are afraid of reducing ourselves to their lamentable circumstances. The dismal time of trade we had during Marr’s Troubles in Scotland, are looked upon as happy days when compared with the present. I need not tell you, sir, that this griping want, this dismal poverty, this additional woe, must be put to the accursed stocks, which have desolated our country more effectually than England. Stock-jobbing was a kind of traffic we were utterly unacquainted with. We went late to the South Sea market, and bore a great share in the losses of it, without having tasted any of its profits.
If many in England have been ruined by stocks, some have been advanced. The English have a free and open trade to repair their losses; but, above all, a wise, vigilant, and uncorrupted Parliament and ministry, strenuously endeavouring to restore public trade to its former happy state. Whilst we, having lost the greatest part of our cash, without any probability of its returning, must despair of retrieving our losses by trade, and have before our eyes the dismal prospect of universal poverty and desolation.
I believe, sir, you are by this time heartily tired with this indigested letter, and are firmly persuaded of the truth of what I said in the beginning of it, that you had much better have imposed this task on some of our citizens of greater abilities. But perhaps, sir, such a letter as this may be, for the singularity of it, entertaining to you, who correspond with the politest and most learned men in Europe. But I am satisfied you will excuse its want of exactness and perspicuity when you consider my education, my being unaccustomed to writings of this nature, and, above all, those calamitous objects which constantly surround us, sufficient to disturb the clearest imagination, and the soundest judgment.
Whatever cause I have given you, by this letter, to think worse of my sense and judgment, I fancy I have given you a manifest proof that I am, sir,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
J. S.
“A PROPOSAL FOR THE UNIVERSAL USE
OF IRISH MANUFACTURES.” 1720.
The social condition of Ireland at the above period has been already briefly described. When the landlord class were degraded and the tenantry debased by the iniquitous laws of Charles II. and William III., which suppressed the trade of the country, the oppressed people found in Swift a mouthpiece for their wrongs. The above proposal was the voice of the nation rendered articulate by his utterance. It proposes in effect a reprisal on England for her restrictions, by a refusal to use anything that comes thence. A confederation is to be formed, pledged to use nothing that is not of Irish manufacture. Everything, he trusts, will be burned that comes from England, except the people and the coals. Swift’s proposal was faulty in political economy. Of this the age knew little, and Swift cared less. The printer of this pamphlet was prosecuted. The Chief Justice (Whitshed) sent back the jury nine times, and kept them eleven hours before they would consent to bring in a “special verdict.” The unpopularity of the prosecution became so great that it was at last dropped.
A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture,
In clothes and furniture of houses, &c.
Utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that comes from England. 1720.
It is the peculiar felicity and prudence of the people in this kingdom, that whatever commodities and productions lie under the greatest discouragements from England, those are what they are sure to be most industrious in cultivating and spreading.
Agriculture, which has been the principal care of all wise nations, and for the encouragement whereof there are so many statute laws in England, we countenance so well, that the landlords are everywhere, by penal clauses, absolutely prohibiting their tenants from ploughing;[40] not satisfied to confine them within certain limitations, as is the practice of the English: one effect of which is already seen in the prodigious dearness of corn, and the importation of it from London, as the cheaper market. And because people are the riches of a country, and that our neighbours have done, and are doing, all that in them lies to make our wool a drug to us, and a monopoly to them; therefore, the politic gentlemen of Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best land for the feeding of sheep.
I could fill a volume as large as the history of the Wise Men of Gotham, with a catalogue only of some wonderful laws and customs we have observed within thirty years past. It is true, indeed, our beneficial traffic of wool with France has been our only support for several years, furnishing us with all the little money we have to pay our rents, and go to market. But our merchants assure me, this trade has received a great damp by the present fluctuating condition of the coin in France; and that most of their wine is paid for in specie, without carrying thither any commodity from hence.
However, since we are so universally bent upon enlarging our flocks, it may be worth inquiring what we shall do with our wool, in case Barnstaple should be overstocked, and our French commerce should fail.
I could wish the Parliament had thought fit to have suspended their regulation of church matters, and enlargements of the prerogative, until a more convenient time, because they did not appear very pressing, at least to the persons principally concerned; and, instead of these great refinements in politics and divinity, had amused themselves and their committees a little with the state of the nation. For example: What if the House of Commons had thought fit to make a resolution, nemine contradicente, against wearing any cloth or stuff in their families, which were not of the growth and manufacture of this kingdom? What if they had extended it so far as utterly to exclude all silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies; and declared, that whoever acted otherwise should be deemed and reputed an enemy to the nation? What if they had sent up such a resolution to be agreed to by the House of Lords, and by their own practice and encouragement, spread the execution of it in their several countries? What if we should agree to make burying in woollen a fashion, as our neighbours have made it a law? What if the ladies would be content with Irish stuffs for the furniture of their houses, for gowns and petticoats for themselves and their daughters? Upon the whole, and to crown all the rest, let a firm resolution be taken, by male and female, never to appear with one single shred that comes from England, and let all the people say AMEN.
I hope and believe, that nothing could please his Majesty better than to hear that his loyal subjects of both sexes in this kingdom celebrated his birthday (now approaching) universally clad in their own manufacture. Is there virtue enough left in this deluded people to save them from the brink of ruin? If men’s opinions may be taken, the ladies will look as handsome in stuffs as in brocades; and since all will be equal, there may be room enough to employ their wit and fancy, in choosing and matching patterns and colours.
I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody’s, that Ireland would never be happy, till a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals.
I must confess, that as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the latter, I hope in a little time we shall have no occasion for them.
Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum—
but I should rejoice to see a stay-lace from England be thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.
If the unthinking shopkeepers in this town had not been utterly destitute of common sense, they would have made some proposal to the Parliament, with a petition to the purpose I have mentioned; promising to improve the cloths and stuffs of the nation into all possible degrees of fineness and colours, and engaging not to play the knave, according to their custom, by exacting and imposing upon the nobility and gentry, either as to the prices or the goodness.
For I remember, in London, upon a general mourning, the rascally mercers and woollen-drapers would in twenty-four hours raise their cloths and silks to above a double price, and if the mourning continued long, then come whining with petitions to the court, that they were ready to starve, and their fineries lay upon their hands.
I could wish our shopkeepers would immediately think on this proposal, addressing it to all persons of quality and others; but, first, be sure to get somebody who can write sense, to put it into form.
I think it needless to exhort the clergy to follow this good example; because, in a little time, those among them who are so unfortunate as to have had their birth and education in this country, will think themselves abundantly happy when they can afford Irish crape, and an Athlone hat; and as to the others, I shall not presume to direct them. I have, indeed, seen the present Archbishop of Dublin clad from head to foot in our own manufacture; and yet, under the rose be it spoken, his Grace deserves as good a gown as if he had not been born among us.
I have not courage enough to offer one syllable on this subject to their honours of the army; neither have I sufficiently considered the great importance of scarlet and gold lace.
The fable in Ovid of Arachne and Pallas is to this purpose.—The goddess had heard of one Arachne, a young virgin, very famous for spinning and weaving. They both met upon a trial of skill; and Pallas, finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and envy, knocked her rival down, and turned her into a spider; enjoining her to spin and weave for ever out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass.
I confess, that, from a boy, I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never heartily love the goddess, on account of so cruel and unjust a sentence; which, however, is fully executed upon us by England, with farther additions of rigour and severity; for the greatest part of our bowels and vitals is extracted, without allowing us the liberty of spinning and weaving them.
The Scripture tells us, that “oppression makes a wise man mad;” therefore, consequently speaking, the reason why some men are not mad is because they are not wise. However it were to be wished, that oppression would in time teach a little wisdom to fools.
I was much delighted with a person, who has a great estate in this kingdom, upon his complaints to me, how grievously poor England suffers by impositions from Ireland:—That we convey our wool to France, in spite of all the harpies at the custom-house; that Mr. Shuttleworth and others, on the Cheshire coast, are such fools to sell us their bark at a good price for tanning our own hides into leather; with other enormities of the like weight and kind. To which I will venture to add more:—That the mayoralty of this city is always executed by an inhabitant, and often by a native, which might as well be done by a deputy with a moderate salary, whereby poor England loses at least one thousand pounds a-year upon the balance; that the governing of this kingdom costs the Lord-Lieutenant three thousand six hundred pounds a year—so much net loss to poor England; that the people of Ireland presume to dig for coals on their own grounds; and the farmers in the county of Wicklow send their turf to the very market of Dublin, to the great discouragement of the coal trade of Mostyn and Whitehaven; that the revenues of the post-office here, so righteously belonging to the English treasury, as arising chiefly from our commerce with each other, should be remitted to London clogged with that grievous burden of exchange; and the pensions paid out of the Irish revenues to English favourites, should lie under the same disadvantage, to the great loss of the grantees. When a divine is sent over to a bishopric here, with the hopes of five-and-twenty hundred pounds a year, and, upon his arrival, he finds, alas! a dreadful discount of ten or twelve per cent.; a judge, or a commissioner of the revenue, has the same cause of complaint.... These are a few among the many hardships we put upon that poor kingdom of England, for which, I am confident, every honest man wishes a remedy. And I hear there is a project on foot for transporting our best wheaten straw, by sea and land carriage, to Dunstable, and obliging us, by a law, to take off yearly so many ton of straw hats, for the use of our women; which will be a great encouragement to the manufacture of that industrious town.
I should be glad to learn among the divines, whether a law to bind men without their own consent be obligatory in foro conscientiæ; because I find Scripture, Sanderson, and Suarez, are wholly silent on the matter. The oracle of reason, the great law of nature, and general opinion of civilians, wherever they treat of limited governments, are indeed decisive enough.
It is wonderful to observe the bias among our people in favour of things, persons, and wares of all kinds, that come from England. The printer tells his hawkers, that he has got an excellent new song just brought from London. I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and, upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself, with great volubility, upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments. It is not many years since I remember a person, who, by his style and literature, seems to have been the corrector of a hedge-press in some blind alley about Little Britain, proceed gradually to be an author, at least a translator of a lower rate, although somewhat of a larger bulk, than any that now flourishes in Grub Street; and, upon the strength of this foundation, come over here, erect himself up into an orator and politician, and lead a kingdom after him. This, I am told, was the very motive that prevailed on the author of a play, called “Love in a Hollow Tree,” to do us the honour of a visit; presuming, with very good reason, that he was a writer of a superior class. I know another, who, for thirty years past, has been the common standard of stupidity in England, where he was never heard a minute in any assembly, or by any party, with common Christian treatment; yet, upon his arrival here, could put on a face of importance and authority, talk more than six, without either gracefulness, propriety, or meaning, and, at the same time, be admired and followed as the pattern of eloquence and wisdom.
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I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords; who, by immeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers, will, in a very few years, be utterly at an end. It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen labouring, with all their might, for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value (whereby the whole order would, in an age, have been reduced to manifest beggary), at the very instant when they were everywhere canting[41] their own land upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance.... I have heard great divines affirm, that nothing is so likely to call down a universal judgment from Heaven upon a nation as universal oppression; and whether this be not already verified in part, their worships the landlords, are now at full leisure to consider. Whoever travels this country, and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity is professed. I cannot forbear saying one word upon a thing they call a bank, which, I fear, is projecting in this town.[42] I never saw the proposals, nor understood any one particular of their scheme. What I wish for at present, is only a sufficient provision of hemp, and caps and bells, to distribute according to the several degrees of honesty and prudence in some persons. I hear only of a monstrous sum already named; and if others do not soon hear of it too, and hear with a vengeance, then I am a gentleman of less sagacity than myself, and very few beside myself, take me to be. And the jest will be still the better if it be true, as judicious persons have assured me, that one half of this money will be real, and the other half altogether imaginary. The matter will be likewise much mended, if the merchants continue to carry off our gold, and our goldsmiths to melt down our heavy silver.