NOTE.
Burke spoke of Swift's tracts of a public nature, relating to Ireland, as "those in which the Dean appears in the best light, because they do honour to his heart as well as his head; furnishing some additional proofs that, though he was very free in his abuse of the inhabitants of that country, as well natives as foreigners, he had their interest sincerely at heart, and perfectly understood it."
The following tract on "The Last Words and Dying Speech of Ebenezer Elliston" admirably illustrates Burke's remark.
The city of Dublin, at the time Swift wrote, was on a par with some of the lower districts of New York City about twenty years ago, which were dangerous in the extreme to traverse after dark. Robbers in gangs would waylay pedestrians and leave them often badly maltreated and maimed. These thieves and "roughs" became so impudent and brazen in their business that the condition of the city was a disgrace to the municipal government. To put down the nuisance Swift took a characteristic method. Ebenezer Elliston had, about this time, been executed for street robbery. Although given a good education by his parents, he forsook his trade of a silk weaver, and became a gambler and burglar. He was well known to the other gangs which infested Dublin, but his death did not act as a deterrent. Swift, in composing Elliston's pretended dying speech, gave it the flavour and character of authenticity in order to impose on the members of other gangs, and so successful was he in his intention, that the speech was accepted as the real expression of their late companion by the rest and had a most salutary effect. Scott says it was "received as genuine by the banditti who had been companions of his depredations, who were the more easily persuaded of its authenticity as it contained none of the cant usual in the dying speeches composed for malefactors by the Ordinary or the ballad-makers. The threat which it held out of a list deposited with a secure hand, containing their names, crimes, and place of rendezvous, operated for a long time in preventing a repetition of their villanies, which had previously been so common."
The text of the present edition is based on that given by Faulkner in the fourth volume of his edition of Swift printed in Dublin in 1735.