If the unthinking shopkeepers in this town had not been utterly destitute of common sense, they would have made some proposal to the Parliament, with a petition to the purpose I have mentioned; promising to improve the cloths and stuffs of the nation into all possible degrees of fineness and colours, and engaging not to play the knave, according to their custom, by exacting and imposing upon the nobility and gentry, either as to the prices or the goodness.
For I remember, in London, upon a general mourning, the rascally mercers and woollen-drapers would in twenty-four hours raise their cloths and silks to above a double price, and if the mourning continued long, then come whining with petitions to the court, that they were ready to starve, and their fineries lay upon their hands.
I could wish our shopkeepers would immediately think on this proposal, addressing it to all persons of quality and others; but, first, be sure to get somebody who can write sense, to put it into form.
I think it needless to exhort the clergy to follow this good example; because, in a little time, those among them who are so unfortunate as to have had their birth and education in this country, will think themselves abundantly happy when they can afford Irish crape, and an Athlone hat; and as to the others, I shall not presume to direct them. I have, indeed, seen the present Archbishop of Dublin clad from head to foot in our own manufacture; and yet, under the rose be it spoken, his Grace deserves as good a gown as if he had not been born among us.
I have not courage enough to offer one syllable on this subject to their honours of the army; neither have I sufficiently considered the great importance of scarlet and gold lace.
The fable in Ovid of Arachne and Pallas is to this purpose.—The goddess had heard of one Arachne, a young virgin, very famous for spinning and weaving. They both met upon a trial of skill; and Pallas, finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and envy, knocked her rival down, and turned her into a spider; enjoining her to spin and weave for ever out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass.
I confess, that, from a boy, I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never heartily love the goddess, on account of so cruel and unjust a sentence; which, however, is fully executed upon us by England, with farther additions of rigour and severity; for the greatest part of our bowels and vitals is extracted, without allowing us the liberty of spinning and weaving them.
The Scripture tells us, that “oppression makes a wise man mad;” therefore, consequently speaking, the reason why some men are not mad is because they are not wise. However it were to be wished, that oppression would in time teach a little wisdom to fools.
I was much delighted with a person, who has a great estate in this kingdom, upon his complaints to me, how grievously poor England suffers by impositions from Ireland:—That we convey our wool to France, in spite of all the harpies at the custom-house; that Mr. Shuttleworth and others, on the Cheshire coast, are such fools to sell us their bark at a good price for tanning our own hides into leather; with other enormities of the like weight and kind. To which I will venture to add more:—That the mayoralty of this city is always executed by an inhabitant, and often by a native, which might as well be done by a deputy with a moderate salary, whereby poor England loses at least one thousand pounds a-year upon the balance; that the governing of this kingdom costs the Lord-Lieutenant three thousand six hundred pounds a year—so much net loss to poor England; that the people of Ireland presume to dig for coals on their own grounds; and the farmers in the county of Wicklow send their turf to the very market of Dublin, to the great discouragement of the coal trade of Mostyn and Whitehaven; that the revenues of the post-office here, so righteously belonging to the English treasury, as arising chiefly from our commerce with each other, should be remitted to London clogged with that grievous burden of exchange; and the pensions paid out of the Irish revenues to English favourites, should lie under the same disadvantage, to the great loss of the grantees. When a divine is sent over to a bishopric here, with the hopes of five-and-twenty hundred pounds a year, and, upon his arrival, he finds, alas! a dreadful discount of ten or twelve per cent.; a judge, or a commissioner of the revenue, has the same cause of complaint.... These are a few among the many hardships we put upon that poor kingdom of England, for which, I am confident, every honest man wishes a remedy. And I hear there is a project on foot for transporting our best wheaten straw, by sea and land carriage, to Dunstable, and obliging us, by a law, to take off yearly so many ton of straw hats, for the use of our women; which will be a great encouragement to the manufacture of that industrious town.
I should be glad to learn among the divines, whether a law to bind men without their own consent be obligatory in foro conscientiæ; because I find Scripture, Sanderson, and Suarez, are wholly silent on the matter. The oracle of reason, the great law of nature, and general opinion of civilians, wherever they treat of limited governments, are indeed decisive enough.