Prior. With all my Heart, provided you will allow me the Priviledge of a free Conference, and bear with my opposing, whatever I think is wrong in your Assertions, and let me canvass your Opinions where I want Information or Proofs. I came to call on you, in order to Talk over all that I thought dangerous or distressful, in our present Circumstances and our future Prospects; and to consider what hope we can strike out of Relief or Comfort, for this neglected People and Country; and I promise before hand, I shall not contradict you in any Thing, where you do not force me to it, by an over-bearing Zeal, or a querulous Temper.
Swift. A fair Preliminary, to which I readily Subscribe. Now the first Reason, Tom, why I have uneasy fears for our Country, and for my having little Expectation of mending her Circumstances is, the utter absence of all Industry and Frugality among us. There is no other Remedy for a thoughtless Nation, which gets little or nothing from others, but saving all it can; and being frugal in proportion to its Indolence and Poverty. This is a self-evident Truth, and yet our Nobility and Gentry spend in Vanity and Luxury, treble as much as Men of twice their Fortune in England, tho' they do not half the Good among their Tenants, and neither spend half the Time or Money with them, or take half the pains to improve them, while they every Year encrease their Rents, and our Beggars: 'Tis dismal to make the poor Tenant give the full Tale of Brick, tho' we give them no Straw, and that we starve them, by sending our Money abroad for foreign Commodities, to feed our Extravagance, and gratify our Madness for importing Fopperies; tho' we hurt our Families for the present, and ruin our Poor for ever, who dare not set up Manufactures they know will not be worn. Surely in a Kingdom where no body looks to his own Affairs, as they are connected with the Publick, 'tis Time the Publick shou'd look to every Bodies. What a melancholy Prospect is it, to see fine Cloaths, fine Equipages, fine Race Horses, fine Laces, fine Dishes, deep Play and deep Drinking, the Glory and delight of our People of Fashion; and Ease, and Sloth, and Sleep, and Potatoes, the chief Joy of our Lifeless neglected Natives. Is not such a Nation like a Ship set on Fire on one end, and sinking by a thousand Shot-holes and Leaks, at the other? If we were a little frugal, we might the better bear the Loss we undergo by our Idleness and Inactivity; but when our Gentlemen sacrifice so much to their Pleasures, and our Ladies to their Finery, both which they wisely seek for from foreign Productions, we must be undone unless we prevent our Destruction, by resolving to Work and be busy. There is no Alternative——, one of these two Things we must do; we must either be less Mad for the Manufactures and Products of other Nations, or we must enlarge our Industry, and make Reprisals thereby on our Neighbours, in order to keep our People alive and easy while they are Living. Possibly I may have said this before, Tom, and probably I shall say it again, for a full Heart and a troubled Mind, is apt to deal in Repetitions, when they grow almost desperate, and see little hope of a Change for the better.
Prior. Dear Dean, I own I shou'd be glad to contradict you, as to these dismal Representations of Things; but I have learn'd since I left a false World, to love Truth, tho' it be ever so strong against us, or puts us and our Actions in ever so bad a Light. It is too certain Industry and Frugality are the two great Sources of Prosperity in all Nations; and it is a mortifying Reflection to consider what a miserable Share we have in either of them here. 'Tis as certain if we be Frugal and Industrious, we must be easy and happy, as that we must be wretched and miserable, if we continue our Love to Expence and our hatred to Labour. Nay Frugality and Wealth, which is the Consequence of it, will not do, unless we are diligent Workers too; for Spain is a Proof, and so is Portugal, that even Hoards of Money will not enrich a Nation, unless their Gold is used to promote Industry among the meaner Sort, and to raise their Thoughts above Sleep, and Rags, and Dirt, and Inactivity.
Swift. Very true, Tom, and indeed one wou'd hope unless Heaven has irrecoverably doom'd us to Destruction, there are sufficient Remains of common Sense and Honesty left among our Countrymen, to new form our Manners in these Regards, and improve their ways of Thinking and Acting. In such Case, they may in two or three Centuries learn to believe, Frugality and Industry, Arts and Manufactures worth encouraging, and their Luxury and Debauchery, and an utter Absence of all Regard to the Publick, worth Reforming. It is a shocking Truth to say all this wou'd be done, if Men wou'd but own themselves oblig'd, and wou'd therefore resolve to behave, like reasonable Creatures: And yet this is a Point as hard to bring about, as if we were arguing with Hottentots, and persuading Tartars to forbear publick Plunders, and to have some regard to Right and Wrong, and the real Happiness and Misery of themselves and their Posterity.
Prior. I agree with you entirely, Mr. Dean, and indeed if we cou'd cure our national Ailments by Writing and Speaking, as People who profess removing Disorders, by Words and Charms, what you and I and some others have Publish'd, might have done the Work: But alas! pressing Industry and Frugality on many of our People, who have been train'd up to Sloth and Squandering, is but of equal Efficacy with preaching up Temperance to Sots, or Cleanliness to Negroes, when their Habits and Vices are all against you. The Church of Rome has plac'd Purgatory in the North-West of Ireland, which was then one of the remotest wildest Parts of the Earth; and tho' I have reason to believe, they now Wish, they had removed it something more out of View, yet I am sure there is no Part of the Globe, so fit a Purgatory for Sloth as Ireland, or where People so generally pay St. Paul's Penalty for not Working, by not Eating.
Swift. If due Care was taken, this natural Supineness of our lower People, might be soon turn'd into Activity and Vivacity, by letting them see and feel the Sweets of Labour, and convincing them by Fact and Experience, that when once the Poor are made industrious, they turn all they Touch to Gold, like Midas's Fingers of famous Memory. As to our sleepy Countrymen, I cannot but say that it is a Pity, where Men are commanded to give one Day of the Week, to doing nothing but Acts of Piety, they don't regard the other Part of the Law, and labour the other Six. This at least shou'd be the Magistrate's, and the human Legislator's Business; but really there is no Law made, nor Care taken about it, but every Body overlooks this plain neglected Truth, that Men ought to be as accountable to the Magistrate, for their Time as their Actions, and as punishable for wasting it. But our Irish seem actually to have mistaken the divine Commandment, and it is well their Priests did not leave it out of the Decalogue, as they did the Second. They manage, as if they thought God had bid them be idle six Days of the Week, and Work but one, and very moderately on that one. I have often met in Authors, and think the Assertion true, that the very Genius of the Popish Religion indisposes Men to Labour; as we see by their numerous Holidays, Feasts and Fasts: All which are direct Enemies to Toil and Handy-craft, and make the returns to Work disagreeable. It is undoubted that the Protestants out Trade and out Work the Papists; they have (as all observe) fewer Beggars, they have fewer Drains from their Industry, by those who sleep away their Lives in Colleges and Nunneries; they maintain a much smaller Number of secular Priests, and even to those, they do not prohibit Marriage, and to say no more at present, those lazy Drones the Friars of so many different Orders, are Cankers and Consumptions quite unknown to their Constitution. In most Protestant Countries, more than ordinary Attention, for good political Reasons, has been given to this great Point. In Holland all are employ'd, even the lettred World deal in Traffick and are Merchants; nay the Deaf, the Lame, the Blind, the Dumb, and the very Dead Work.
Prior. The Dead Work! That is a Flight extraordinary sure, Mr. Dean, and I must call on you to retract that Mistake.
Swift. Not at all; for tho' that Truth is a little incomprehensible in Ireland, where we have no such Incitements, in Holland the Statues and Monuments of their useful and industrious Citizens, and the Epitaphs and Praises on them, prompt and inflame the living to emulate them, and push on their Virtue to excell, in every Art, and open every Road to Profit and to Glory. When I was throwing away (like other People) my Thoughts and my Time above Ground, I used often to think on these Matters; and I fear to as little Purpose as we talk of them now. However I must say, Tom, that tho' if our rich People would think and grow Managers, and our Poor wou'd Work, and keep their Hands and their Children busy, nine tenths of our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he will mend.
Prior. Ruin is as terrible a Remedy, as a deadly Sickness is a Reformer; and I had rather hope that sumptuary Laws against Dress, Racing, Gaming, &c. if we were Wise enough to make them, and amendable enough to mind them when made, wou'd do our Business much better. 'Tis a Misfortune for Ireland, that our Spendthrifts so often run out their Lives and their Estates together, and so their Examples are lost on us; for I ever thought it a Pity, they shou'd not live forty or fifty Years in beggary, their own Lives are such a Torment to them, and they become thereby such fine Scare-crows, to our young unthinking Squanderers, when they see them all the while, standing as it were in a kind of Pillory. Nothing keeps the Dutch so frugal as their Loads of high Taxes, for some good Author, (and I think 'tis your old Friend Sir William Temple) tells us, one cannot have a Dish of well dressed Fish at a Tavern in Holland, without paying near thirty Gabels for it. We want some Remedy for our Extravagancies of all Kinds greatly, but this is so shocking a one, that one wou'd hope the very fear of it might cure us, as some Men have renounc'd their Intemperance, by their dread of the Gout and the Doctor. Without some such helps, our fine Gentlemen seem not inclined to learn or consider, that we shou'd save immense Sums to our Country, if we eat Corn of our own sowing, drunk home-made Wines of our own Brewing, fed on Fish of our own catching, burn'd Coals of our own raising, and wore no Cloaths that were not of our own manufacturing. If they were once convinced of this, good Effects wou'd follow, and we shou'd soon acknowledge that it is barely owing to our own Extravagance, Thoughtlesness, Sleepiness, Drunkenness and Vanity, that we don't, with one Voice, condemn and renounce such evident Errors, in our national Conduct, and fix on their Remedies.
Swift. This Tom, is merely dreaming of a publick Cure for an epidemical Distemper, as Curtius says Ptolomy did; but we shou'd not only get our Gentlemen, to think for the Nation and themselves; for we want severe Laws to cure the Laziness and Indolence of our lower People. As Idleness is the great Source of Theft, picking and filching, the natural Punishment of at least all smaller Criminals, seems to be hard Labour for Life, or Years. We see in France and Spain they man their Gallies this way, and in Sweden and Denmark they employ them in their publick Works, and chiefly about their Shipping and their Docks. No Punishment cou'd be more terrifying to an Irishman, who we generally think is averse to Labour; none cou'd be more useful to our distressed Land, where we lose more People by doing Nothing, than are destroy'd by the Wars and Conquests, the Voyages and Traffick of other Kingdoms. On this Account we shou'd take Care, that Idlers, Beggars and vagabond Strollers, shou'd be treated with the Sharpest Rigour, as they do not only deny to assist their Country by their honest Endeavours, but live like Drones on the Spoil of the Industrious. It shou'd be a Maxim in every well governed State, but especially in Ireland, that Idleness shou'd be as severely punish'd as petty Larceny; and to beg with an Ability to Work, shou'd be regarded and treated as a Kind of training up Youth for Stealing, (when they have learn'd the proper Cant and Tricks of their Apprenticeship) and consequently to relieve a Vagabond, shou'd be as faulty and as corrigible as receiving stolen Goods. The proper Place for the Relief of sturdy Beggars, is a good County Work-house, where the Labours of such Vagabonds (and indeed of all Criminals till they are Tried and Discharg'd) shou'd go to the Maintainance of such Poor, who are utterly incapable of Work, and whose Parishes can't support them.