Nostrâ miseriâ magnus es.
There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland, which is not a logical demonstration of its poverty. The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants who live worse than English beggars. The lowness of interest, in all other countries a sign of wealth, is in us a proof of misery, there being no trade to employ any borrower. Hence alone comes the dearness of land, since the savers have no other way to lay out their money. Hence the dearness of necessaries for life, because the tenants cannot afford to pay such extravagant rates for land (which they must take, or go a-begging) without raising the price of cattle, and of corn, although they should live upon chaff. Hence our increase of buildings in this City, because workmen have nothing to do but employ one another, and one half of them are infallibly undone. Hence the daily increase of bankers, who may be a necessary evil in a trading country, but so ruinous in ours, who for their private advantage have sent away all our silver, and one third of our gold, so that within three years past the running cash of the Nation, which was about five hundred thousand pounds, is now less than two, and must daily diminish unless we have liberty to coin, as well as that important Kingdom the Isle of Man, and the meanest Prince in the German Empire, as I before observed.[57]
I have sometimes thought, that this paradox of the Kingdom growing rich, is chiefly owing to those worthy gentlemen the BANKERS, who, except some custom-house officers, birds of passage, oppressive thrifty squires, and a few others that shall be nameless, are the only thriving people among us: And I have often wished that a law were enacted to hang up half a dozen bankers every year, and thereby interpose at least some short delay, to the further ruin of Ireland.
"Ye are idle, ye are idle," answered Pharaoh to the Israelites, when they complained to his Majesty, that they were forced to make bricks without straw.
England enjoys every one of these advantages for enriching a Nation, which I have above enumerated, and into the bargain, a good million returned to them every year without labour or hazard, or one farthing value received on our side. But how long we shall be able to continue the payment, I am not under the least concern. One thing I know, that when the hen is starved to death, there will be no more golden eggs.
I think it a little unhospitable, and others may call it a subtile piece of malice, that, because there may be a dozen families in this Town, able to entertain their English friends in a generous manner at their tables, their guests upon their return to England, shall report that we wallow in riches and luxury.
Yet I confess I have known an hospital, where all the household officers grew rich, while the poor for whose sake it was built, were almost starving for want of food and raiment.
To conclude. If Ireland be a rich and flourishing Kingdom, its wealth and prosperity must be owing to certain causes, that are yet concealed from the whole race of mankind, and the effects are equally invisible. We need not wonder at strangers when they deliver such paradoxes, but a native and inhabitant of this Kingdom, who gives the same verdict, must be either ignorant to stupidity, or a man-pleaser at the expense of all honour, conscience and truth.