The present text is based on that of the quarto edition (vol. viii.) of 1765, and compared with Faulkner's of 1772.

[T. S.]

A PROPOSAL THAT ALL THE LADIES
AND WOMEN OF IRELAND SHOULD
APPEAR CONSTANTLY IN
IRISH MANUFACTURES.

There was a treatise written about nine years ago, to persuade the people of Ireland to wear their own manufactures.[119] This treatise was allowed to have not one syllable in it of party or disaffection; but was wholly founded upon the growing poverty of the nation, occasioned by the utter want of trade in every branch, except that ruinous importation of all foreign extravagancies from other countries. This treatise was presented, by the grand jury of the city and county of Dublin, as a scandalous, seditious, and factious pamphlet. I forget who was the foreman of the city grand jury; but the foreman for the county was one Doctor Seal, register to the Archbishop of Dublin, wherein he differed much from the sentiments of his lord.[120] The printer[121] was tried before the late Mr. Whitshed, that famous Lord chief-justice; who, on the bench, laying his hand on his heart, declared, upon his salvation, that the author was a Jacobite, and had a design to beget a quarrel between the two nations.[122] In the midst of this prosecution, about fifteen hundred weavers were forced to beg their bread, and had a general contribution made for their relief, which just served to make them drunk for a week; and then they were forced to turn rogues, or strolling beggars, or to leave the kingdom.

The Duke of Grafton,[123] who was then Lieutenant, being perfectly ashamed of so infamous and unpopular a proceeding, obtained from England a noli prosequi for the printer. Yet the grand jury had solemn thanks given them from the Secretary of State.

I mention this passage (perhaps too much forgotten,) to shew how dangerous it hath been for the best meaning person to write one syllable in the defence of his country, or discover the miserable condition it is in.

And to prove this truth, I will produce one instance more; wholly omitting the famous case of the Drapier, and the proclamation against him, as well as the perverseness of another jury against the same Mr. Whitshed, who was violently bent to act the second part in another scene.[124]