CHAPTER IX
Lord Carteret was only thirty-four when, on April 3, 1724, he was declared Viceroy of Ireland. The appointment was Walpole's, whose accession to power presented him with the opportunity of sending Carteret to quell the disturbance in Ireland which he himself—the new viceroy—had encouraged secretly while occupying a private position in the State. Carteret, however, did not flinch, nor did he exhibit any distaste for the task. It was not necessary to treat the Irish as human beings, and he knew that if he propitiated the Anglo-Irish he would gain his own way in everything.
The origin of the trouble and turmoil was the grant of a patent to the Duchess of Kendal, the king's mistress, for the coining of halfpence in Ireland. The duchess already drew £3,000 a year from the Irish Exchequer, but her avarice was aroused by stories of how easily the Irish were plundered, and she persuaded the king to give her the famous patent. She passed it on to Wood, who paid her £10,000, and agreed to remit to the State £1,000 a year for fourteen years. The coinage was not base, but it meant that a profit of £40,000 was to pass into the pockets of the king's mistress and William Wood; they were to rob rich and poor alike, and the State was to lose heavily. The grant was made without consulting the Irish Parliament or the Irish Privy Council.
Swift, who had been waiting for this opportunity, seized it with avidity, and the 'Drapier's Letters' was the result. Wood's halfpence was characteristic of English misrule of Ireland, and, roused to frenzy by the dean's pamphlets, the country unanimously obeyed his call to ignore the latest coins, and always to refuse to recognize their legality. The dean's extravagant fancy found full scope in the 'Drapier's Letters'; the pamphlets were sold in their tens of thousands, and Walpole's determination was outmatched by the fury of the Irish not to allow themselves to be swindled to provide for the expenses of the German's mistress.
The new viceroy landed in Ireland in the month that witnessed the publication of the fourth 'Letter,' and his first act was to offer a reward of £300 for the discovery of the writer. Swift's anonymity was too safe, however, and the Lord-Lieutenant had to be satisfied with the arrest of the printer, Harding. When the dean heard of this, he bearded Carteret in Dublin Castle, and reproached him in singularly straightforward language with cowardice and weakness in persecuting a tradesman. The viceroy took the verbal buffeting in good part, for Swift and he were old friends; but Harding was put to all the worry and expense of a prosecution at the hands of a partisan Chief Justice—Whitshed—though the grand jury eventually threw out the bill against him, and he was discharged.
Swift's victory
The cancellation of the patent has been described as a victory for Swift and Ireland, but all that can be said truthfully is that it enabled the dean to claim a personal triumph, while the county actually lost by the agreement. For the surrender of his rights Wood was paid £3,000 a year for eight years, a sum—£24,000—at least equal to the profits he would have made had he been allowed to carry out the terms of his patent without opposition. The principal cause of the surrender to popular opinion was, undoubtedly, the indifference of Carteret to the policy he had been sent to carry out. He was no enthusiastic admirer of Walpole's statesmanship, and he knew very well that Irish affairs were considered of no importance whatever in England, and that if he went to the trouble and worry of defeating the malcontents he would get no credit in London, and make himself and his presence in Dublin unpopular. He was, therefore, only too willing to flatter public opinion by pretending to bow to it.
