'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of probability, too—for there are degrees of probability, proper even to the wildest fiction—the fourth part of Gulliver is inferior to the three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save, possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure altogether unfits them.'[46]
Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details, make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.' It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life 'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift on the appearance of the Travels, pretending that they did not know the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has passed Lords and Commons nemine contradicente, and the whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the Travels, Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once, about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.'
The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's History. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, '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 staylace from England be thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer. Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the prosecution was dropped.
Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the issue of the Drapier's Letters, purporting to come from a Dublin draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known perfectly well from whom the Letters came, but no one would betray Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter 'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold or silver, he adds:
'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have no place—because compelling the subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure we have which those of English birth can have no pretence to—that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate—the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent—a ruined trade—a House of Peers without jurisdiction—almost an incapacity for all employments—and the dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any man for setting his royal image and superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only attended with one small limitation—that nobody alive is obliged to take them.'