Swift. No more than a few Showers of Rain, wou'd quench the Conflagration, if the Pyrenees with all their Forests were on Fire, as we Read they once were. All the Dublin Society did, was to shew what we wanted, and to set an Example, of what might be done, to help our dreadful Ailments: But you might as well expect to work Miracles, and to feed Thousands, like our Saviour, with a few Loaves, as to retrieve a Nation, by throwing a few Widow's Mites into the Treasury. It is true, Nations, with their many Hands, make light Work; but where can the Power be found, to animate and employ Millions, but in the Omnipotence of him who made them, or the force and weight of Monarchs, (the Representatives of Heaven) who Rule and Govern them. All you and your Society cou'd do, was to shew you understood the miserable Condition of Ireland, and to manifest your sincere desire to assist with some Care and Judgment in the Cure; but you cou'd as well remove Mountains by your Faith, as the Ills we groaned under, by so [ adequate ] a Remedy, as your impoverish'd stinted Fund.
Prior. Why you will make me lose all Patience, Mr. Dean! Do you think because I have laid aside Flesh and Blood, that I can bear any Thing? Did not I lay before you, a long delightful Account, of almost infinite Services which the Society did Ireland, in improving old Manufactures, or introducing new Ones; in advancing our Husbandry, in encouraging every Art and every Branch of Industry? As I am now a truly rational thinking Creature, I wou'd not willingly lose my Temper, but I solemnly declare, that the Rules the Society prescrib'd, and the Labours they set on Foot, the Fields which they sow'd or they planted, the Houses they got Built, the Rivers they bank'd in, the Bogs which they drain'd, the Marshes they laid dry, and the Lands they gain'd from the Ocean, have alter'd the very Nature and Face of the Country, and chang'd even the Air and the Climate for the better!
Swift. Stuff, Nonsense, Madness! One wou'd think you were alive still, Tom, by your furious flourishing on Nothing, or Trifles next to nothing. The Nature and Face of the Country alter'd, and even the Air and the Climate chang'd for the better! Have you a Mind to talk my Reason away, or make a Jest of my zeal for Truth? This is the old way of prating and vaunting in Ireland, that used to make me, and every Friend to it sick of such unmeaning Declamations. We are such Fools as ever to be bragging of our Soil and our Linens, our Wealth and our Plenty, our Weather and our Climate, as if we strove to bring over a greater Crowd of English Refugees hither.
Prior. Refugees! dear Dean, how can you indulge such an Acrimony of Speech? That is not only an invidious, but a sarcastical and barbarous Expression.
Swift. Not a whit. I speak only of such as come over to us, for their Love to Religion, for the hope of Liberty of Conscience, whatever they believe, or Preferments in the Church, whatever they Practice, or to avoid Persecution from Men arm'd with Power and the Laws, the Rapaciousness of Creditors, and the Insolence of Sheriffs and Bailiffs, and to live at peace here, with quiet Minds and easy Circumstances. This is a true Notion of a Refugee, and I think such People come over fast enough without such ostentatious Proclamations to give them new Encouragements: My Conduct always took a different Turn, and if I had liv'd a little longer, I had wrote a Treatise to prove Ireland, the most inhospitable and barbarous of all habitable Islands, and the very Piss-pot of the Western World. I even made it a Rule to rail at it all I could, to frighten such People from coming hither, lest hearing there was Corn in the Land, shou'd invite them over to eat it up, while we were kept Starving. You pretend to take Offence at my Expressions, but I see plainly, what vext you was, because forsooth I reflected with some Spleen, on your little huckstering Society, with its two-penny Rewards and three-penny Premiums, for going any silly Errands you sent People on; and so in mere Contradiction you make them reform our Heaven and our Earth, and mend our very Climate and the Face of Nature. For my part as to the Face of Nature and the Country, I know no great Alterations, but the shaving her Beard close, and cutting down all her Woods, so that we now pay 40,000 l. per Annum for imported Timber. When I was an Inhabitant of this lower World, I remember I lov'd the Country well enough in the Summer Season; but I cou'd not bear to spend much Time in it, as I never cou'd Walk or ride in a single Field; that did not put me in a Passion, either to see it as wild as ever Nature left it after the Mud of the Deluge; or at least not so much improv'd as it might be, if the Owner had common Sense or common Industry. What ever enrag'd me most was, that tho' such Fellows I knew by Experience, wou'd venture their Limbs or their Necks for a Guinea, yet they had not the Skill to make Five Pounds more of their Ground than they got by it, tho' a little Labour and Art wou'd have done the Thing. When I look'd on my Airings on the wild Wastes of rich Lands unbuilt and untill'd, I sigh'd for the want of Houses and Tenements, of Welders and Plows; and when after ten Miles riding, I found some lame Attempts after such Things, I was still more vex'd to see our Cabbins, and what we call'd our Corn Grounds, no more resembling the Buildings and Tillage of England, than an Ape does a Man. I really don't expect that Ireland will ever be properly improv'd, till the Millennium makes the whole Earth a Paradise; and then after a long Struggle between Heaven and Nature, we may chance to come in for a share; tho' at present Heaven is so little minded here, as to Churches or Chapels, or national Piety, that I don't wonder to see the Land running into a Desart every Hour, fill'd with Beasts and a few Savages.
Prior. I see, Dean, you have not forgot your old way of thinking and speaking. It is well there is no Pen and Ink, or Printing allow'd under Ground; or else we shou'd have old work below Stairs——
Sub Terris tonnuisse putes——
As the witty Classick expresses it.
Swift. If there was, I wou'd raise a little Earthquake yet in this Kingdom. But I have not forgot, Tom, nor I cannot yet forgive your strange Rant of improving the very Climate in Ireland. If it was, I wou'd not curse it, as Harry the Eighth's Fool did the fine Weather, for taking all the good Company abroad from him, but I shou'd rail at it and you for another Cause; for fear of bringing us better Company than I desire in Ireland. I must confess honestly, that our Winter begins very late, and hardly appears till about the End of December, and is gone before the beginning of February. But then it must be own'd, that we have but very little Spring, unless it be of Grass and Weeds; and that our Autumn lasts but very few Weeks, without any Harvest to gather in, but a little pittance of Corn and some half made Hay; and as for our Summers (as we call them) they come as it were by Chance, now and then one, when Spain and Italy have done with them. Nay, even then, we only get them, as Servants do their surfeited Masters broken Meals; half hot, half cold, in little Scraps and Morsels that do us no Good. In short, Tom, a Summer in Ireland when it wanders thither, is of as little Service as fair Weather in Greenland, where nothing is the better for it, but vast Swamps and Savannahs and a wild waste of Plains and Mountains, a few rational Brutes that dwell in Caves and Holes of the Rocks, and a parcel of Hares and Deers, which they live tollerably on, while they have Light enough to hunt them. And to talk of mending our Climate, where nothing but a general Conflagration can dry the Land, or purge the Dampness of our unelastick Air, is as absurd as the Philosophers Sun-dial in the Grave. Ah, Tom, I was always a very Atmospherical Creature; and often have the Rains of Ireland sunk my Spirits, and made me envy those happy Climates, where the Natives toast in the Sunshine, till they almost grow tir'd of it, and rejoice for Rain and bad Weather, like so many Hackney Coachmen.
But as I hope you have done with all your mighty Reasons, for thinking Ireland on the mending hand, I expect you will indulge me now, while I give you mine, why I think her in a very dangerous declining Situation.