NOTE.
The text of this short paper is taken from Deane Swift's edition, which was followed by Sir Walter Scott.
CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT MAINTAINING
THE POOR.
We have been amused, for at least thirty years past, with numberless schemes, in writing and discourse, both in and out of Parliament, for maintaining the poor, and setting them to work, especially in this city: most of which were idle, indigested, or visionary; and all of them ineffectual, as it has plainly appeared by the consequences. Many of those projectors were so stupid, that they drew a parallel from Holland to England, to be settled in Ireland; that is to say, from two countries with full freedom and encouragement for trade, to a third where all kind of trade is cramped, and the most beneficial parts are entirely taken away. But the perpetual infelicity of false and foolish reasoning, as well as proceeding and acting upon it, seems to be fatal to this country.
For my own part, who have much conversed with those folks who call themselves merchants, I do not remember to have met with a more ignorant and wrong-thinking race of people in the very first rudiments of trade; which, however, was not so much owing to their want of capacity, as to the crazy constitution of this kingdom, where pedlars are better qualified to thrive than the wisest merchants. I could fill a volume with only setting down a list of the public absurdities, by which this kingdom has suffered within the compass of my own memory, such as could not be believed of any nation, among whom folly was not established as a law. I cannot forbear instancing a few of these, because it may be of some use to those who shall have it in their power to be more cautious for the future.
The first was, the building of the barracks; whereof I have seen above one-half, and have heard enough of the rest, to affirm that the public has been cheated of at least two-thirds of the money raised for that use, by the plain fraud of the undertakers.
Another was the management of the money raised for the Palatines; when, instead of employing that great sum in purchasing lands in some remote and cheap part of the kingdom, and there planting those people as a colony, the whole end was utterly defeated.
A third is, the insurance office against fire, by which several thousand pounds are yearly remitted to England, (a trifle, it seems, we can easily spare,) and will gradually increase until it comes to a good national tax: for the society-marks upon our houses (under which might properly be written, "The Lord have mercy upon us!") spread faster and farther than the colony of frogs.[192] I have, for above twenty years past, given warning several thousand times to many substantial people, and to such who are acquainted with lords and squires, and the like great folks, to any of whom I have not the honour to be known: I mentioned my daily fears, lest our watchful friends in England might take this business out of our hands; and how easy it would be to prevent that evil, by erecting a society of persons who had good estates, such, for instance, as that noble knot of bankers, under the style of "Swift and Company." But now we are become tributary to England, not only for materials to light our own fires, but for engines to put them out; to which, if hearth-money be added, (repealed in England as a grievance,) we have the honour to pay three taxes for fire.
A fourth was the knavery of those merchants, or linen-manufacturers, or both, when, upon occasion of the plague at Marseilles, we had a fair opportunity of getting into our hands the whole linen-trade of Spain; but the commodity was so bad, and held at so high a rate, that almost the whole cargo was returned, and the small remainder sold below the prime cost.
So many other particulars of the same nature crowd into my thoughts, that I am forced to stop; and the rather because they are not very proper for my subject, to which I shall now return.
Among all the schemes for maintaining the poor of the city, and setting them to work, the least weight has been laid upon that single point which is of the greatest importance; I mean, that of keeping foreign beggars from swarming hither out of every part of the country; for, until this be brought to pass effectually, all our wise reasonings and proceedings upon them will be vain and ridiculous.
The prodigious number of beggars throughout this kingdom, in proportion to so small a number of people, is owing to many reasons: to the laziness of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potatoe-plots; their early marriages, without the least prospect of establishment; the ruin of agriculture, whereby such vast numbers are hindered from providing their own bread, and have no money to purchase it; the mortal damp upon all kinds of trade, and many other circumstances, too tedious or invidious to mention.
And to the same causes we owe the perpetual concourse of foreign beggars to this town, the country landlords giving all assistance, except money and victuals, to drive from their estates those miserable creatures they have undone.
It was a general complaint against the poor-house, under its former governors, "That the number of poor in this city did not lessen by taking three hundred into the house, and all of them recommended under the minister's and churchwardens' hands of the several parishes": and this complaint must still continue, although the poor-house should be enlarged to contain three thousand, or even double that number.
The revenues of the poor-house, as it is now established, amount to about two thousand pounds a-year; whereof two hundred allowed for officers, and one hundred for repairs, the remaining seventeen hundred, at four pounds a-head, will support four hundred and twenty-five persons. This is a favourable allowance, considering that I subtract nothing for the diet of those officers, and for wear and tear of furniture; and if every one of these collegiates should be set to work, it is agreed they will not be able to gain by their labour above one-fourth part of their maintenance.
At the same time, the oratorial part of these gentlemen seldom vouchsafe to mention fewer than fifteen hundred or two thousand people, to be maintained in this hospital, without troubling their heads about the fund. * * * *
ON BARBAROUS DENOMINATIONS
IN IRELAND.
Sir,
I have been lately looking over the advertisements in some of your Dublin newspapers, which are sent me to the country, and was much entertained with a large list of denominations of lands, to be sold or let. I am confident they must be genuine; for it is impossible that either chance or modern invention could sort the alphabet in such a manner as to make those abominable sounds; whether first invented to invoke or fright away the devil, I must leave among the curious.
If I could wonder at anything barbarous, ridiculous, or absurd, among us, this should be one of the first. I have often lamented that Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, was not prevailed on by that petty king from Ireland, who followed his camp, to come over and civilize us with a conquest, as his countrymen did Britain, where several Roman appellations remain to this day, and so would the rest have done, if that inundation of Angles, Saxons, and other northern people, had not changed them so much for the worse, although in no comparison with ours. In one of the advertisements just mentioned, I encountered near a hundred words together, which I defy any creature in human shape, except an Irishman of the savage kind, to pronounce; neither would I undertake such a task, to be owner of the lands, unless I had liberty to humanize the syllables twenty miles round. The legislature may think what they please, and that they are above copying the Romans in all their conquests of barbarous nations; but I am deceived, if anything has more contributed to prevent the Irish from being tamed, than this encouragement of their language, which might be easily abolished, and become a dead one in half an age, with little expense, and less trouble.
How is it possible that a gentleman who lives in those parts where the town-lands (as they call them) of his estate produce such odious sounds from the mouth, the throat, and the nose, can be able to repeat the words without dislocating every muscle that is used in speaking, and without applying the same tone to all other words, in every language he understands; as it is plainly to be observed not only in those people of the better sort who live in Galway and the Western parts, but in most counties of Ireland?
It is true, that, in the city parts of London, the trading people have an affected manner of pronouncing; and so, in my time, had many ladies and coxcombs at Court. It is likewise true, that there is an odd provincial cant in most counties in England, sometimes not very pleasing to the ear; and the Scotch cadence, as well as expression, are offensive enough. But none of these defects derive contempt to the speaker: whereas, what we call the Irish brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer in the last degree ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies. Neither does it avail whether the censure be reasonable or not, since the fact is always so. And, what is yet worse, it is too well known, that the bad consequence of this opinion affects those among us who are not the least liable to such reproaches, farther than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of English parents, and whose education has been chiefly in that kingdom.
I have heard many gentlemen among us talk much of the great convenience to those who live in the country, that they should speak Irish. It may possibly be so; but I think they should be such who never intend to visit England, upon pain of being ridiculous; for I do not remember to have heard of any one man that spoke Irish, who had not the accent upon his tongue easily discernible to any English ear.
But I have wandered a little from my subject, which was only to propose a wish that these execrable denominations were a little better suited to an English mouth, if it were only for the sake of the English lawyers; who, in trials upon appeals to the House of Lords, find so much difficulty in repeating the names, that, if the plaintiff or defendant were by, they would never be able to discover which were their own lands. But, besides this, I would desire, not only that the appellations of what they call town-lands were changed, but likewise of larger districts, and several towns, and some counties; and particularly the seats of country-gentlemen, leaving an alias to solve all difficulties in point of law. But I would by no means trust these alterations to the owners themselves; who, as they are generally no great clerks, so they seem to have no large vocabulary about them, nor to be well skilled in prosody. The utmost extent of their genius lies in naming their country habitation by a hill, a mount, a brook, a burrow, a castle, a bawn, a ford, and the like ingenious conceits. Yet these are exceeded by others, whereof some have contrived anagramatical appellations, from half their own and their wives' names joined together: others only from the lady; as, for instance, a person whose wife's name was Elizabeth, calls his seat by the name of Bess-borow. There is likewise a famous town, where the worst iron in the kingdom is made, and it is called Swandlingbar: the original of which name I shall explain, lest the antiquaries of future ages might be at a loss to derive it. It was a most witty conceit of four gentlemen, who ruined themselves with this iron project. Sw. stands for Swift,[193] And. for Sanders, Ling for Davling and Bar. for Barry. Methinks I see the four loggerheads sitting in consult, like Smectymnuus, each gravely contributing a part of his own name, to make up one for their place in the ironwork; and could wish they had been hanged, as well as undone, for their wit. But I was most pleased with the denomination of a town-land, which I lately saw in an advertisement of Pue's paper: "This is to give notice, that the lands of Douras, alias Whig-borough," &c. Now, this zealous proprietor, having a mind to record his principles in religion or loyalty to future ages, within five miles round him, for want of other merit, thought fit to make use of this expedient: wherein he seems to mistake his account; for this distinguishing term, whig, had a most infamous original, denoting a man who favoured the fanatic sect, and an enemy to kings, and so continued till this idea was a little softened, some years after the Revolution, and during a part of her late Majesty's reign. After which it was in disgrace until the Queen's death, since which time it hath indeed flourished with a witness: But how long will it continue so, in our variable scene, or what kind of mortal it may describe, is a question which this courtly landlord is not able to answer; and therefore he should have set a date on the title of his borough, to let us know what kind of a creature a whig was in that year of our Lord. I would readily assist nomenclators of this costive imagination, and therefore I propose to others of the same size in thinking, that, when they are at a loss about christening a country-seat, instead of straining their invention, they would call it Booby-borough, Fool-brook, Puppy-ford, Coxcomb-hall, Mount-loggerhead, Dunce-hill; which are innocent appellations, proper to express the talents of the owners. But I cannot reconcile myself to the prudence of this lord of Whig-borough, because I have not yet heard, among the Presbyterian squires, how much soever their persons and principles are in vogue, that any of them have distinguished their country abode by the name of Mount-regicide, Covenant-hall, Fanatic-hill, Roundhead-bawn, Canting-brook, or Mont-rebel, and the like; because there may probably come a time when those kind of sounds may not be so grateful to the ears of the kingdom. For I do not conceive it would be a mark of discretion, upon supposing a gentleman, in allusion to his name, or the merit of his ancestors, to call his house Tyburn-hall.
But the scheme I would propose for changing the denominations of land into legible and audible syllables, is by employing some gentlemen in the University; who, by the knowledge of the Latin tongue, and their judgment in sounds, might imitate the Roman way, by translating those hideous words into their English meanings, and altering the termination where a bare translation will not form a good cadence to the ear, or be easily delivered from the mouth. And, when both those means happen to fail, then to name the parcels of land from the nature of the soil, or some peculiar circumstance belonging to it; as, in England, Farn-ham, Oat-lands, Black-heath, Corn-bury, Rye-gate, Ash-burnham, Barn-elms, Cole-orton, Sand-wich, and many others.
I am likewise apt to quarrel with some titles of lords among us, that have a very ungracious sound, which are apt to communicate mean ideas to those who have not the honour to be acquainted with their persons or their virtues, of whom I have the misfortune to be one. But I cannot pardon those gentlemen who have gotten titles since the judicature of the peers among us has been taken away, to which they all submitted with a resignation that became good Christians, as undoubtedly they are. However, since that time, I look upon a graceful harmonious title to be at least forty per cent. in the value intrinsic of an Irish peerage; and, since it is as cheap as the worst, for any Irish law hitherto enacted in England to the contrary, I would advise the next set, before they pass their patents, to call a consultation of scholars and musical gentlemen, to adjust this most important and essential circumstance. The Scotch noblemen, though born almost under the north pole, have much more tunable appellations, except some very few, which I suppose were given them by the Irish along with their language, at the time when that kingdom was conquered and planted from hence; and to this day retain the denominations of places, and surnames of families, as all historians agree.[194]
I should likewise not be sorry, if the names of some bishops' sees were so much obliged to the alphabet, that upon pronouncing them we might contract some veneration for the order and persons of those reverend peers, which the gross ideas sometimes joined to their titles are very unjustly apt to diminish.