[45] A small country village about seven miles from Kells. [T. S.]
[46] Esther Johnson. [T. S.]
[47] Stella's companion and Swift's housekeeper. [T. S.]
[48] See Swift's "Directions to Servants." [T. S.]
[49] By Acts 18 Charles II c. 2, and 32 Charles II c. 2, enacted in 1665 and 1680, the importation into England from Ireland of all cattle, sheep, swine, beef, pork, bacon, mutton, cheese and butter, was absolutely prohibited. The land of Ireland being largely pasture land and England being the chief and nearest market, these laws practically destroyed the farming industry. The pernicious acts were passed on complaint from English land proprietors that the competition from Irish cattle had lowered their rents in England. "In this manner," says Lecky, "the chief source of Irish prosperity was annihilated at a single blow." [T. S.]
[50] The original Navigation Act treated Ireland on an equal footing with England. The act, however, was succeeded in 1663 by that of 15 Charles II c. 7, in which it was declared that no European articles, with few exceptions, could be imported into the colonies unless they had been loaded in English-built vessels at English ports. Nor could goods be brought from English colonies except to English ports. By the Acts 22 and 23 of Charles II. c. 26 the exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and the Acts 7 and 8 of Will. III. c. 22, passed in 1696, actually prohibited any goods whatever from being imported to Ireland direct from the English colonies. These are the reasons for Swift's remark that Ireland's ports were of no more use to Ireland's people "than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon."
[T. S.]
[51] See note on page 137 of vol. vi of this edition. "The Drapier's Letters." [T. S.]
[52] Lecky quotes from the MSS. in the British Museum, from a series of letters written by Bishop Nicholson, on his journey to Derry, to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The quotation illustrates the truth of Swift's remark. "Never did I behold," writes Nicholson, "even in Picardy, Westphalia, or Scotland, such dismal marks of hunger and want as appeared in the countenances of the poor creatures I met with on the road." In the "Intelligencer" (No. VI, 1728) Sheridan wrote: "The poor are sunk to the lowest degrees of misery and poverty—their houses dunghills, their victuals the blood of their cattle, or the herbs of the field." Of the condition of the country thirty years later, the most terrible of pictures is given by Burdy in his "Life of Skelton": "In 1757 a remarkable dearth prevailed in Ireland.... Mr. Skelton went out into the country to discover the real state of his poor, and travelled from cottage to cottage, over mountains, rocks, and heath.... In one cabin he found the people eating boiled prushia [53] See on this subject the agitation against Wood's halfpence in the volume dealing with "The Drapier's Letters." [T. S.] [54] Faulkner and Scott print this word "irony," but the original edition has it as printed in the text. [T. S.]