A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

CHAPTER XV.

THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS.

[Sidenote: 1724—Wood's coinage]

Lord Carteret arrived at the seat of his Viceroyalty in the midst of a political storm which threatened at one time to blow down a good many shaky institutions. He found the whole country, and especially the capital, convulsed by an agitation the like of which was not seen again until the days of Grattan and the Volunteers. The hero of the agitation was Swift; the spell-words which gave it life and direction were found in "The Drapier's Letters."

The copper coinage of Ireland had been for a long time deficient. Employers of labor had in many cases been obliged to pay their workmen in tokens; sometimes even with pieces of card, stamped and signed, and representing each a small amount. During Sunderland's time of power, the Government set themselves to work to supply the lack of copper, and invited tenders from the owners of mines for the supply. A Mr. William Wood, a man who owned iron and copper mines, and iron and copper works, sent in a tender which was accepted. A patent was given to Wood permitting him to coin halfpence and farthings to the value of one hundred and eight thousand pounds. Walpole had not approved of the scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and consulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, with regard to the objects which the Government had in view, and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a little less in weight than the coin of the same kind {241} current in England. Walpole considered this necessary because of the difference in exchange between the two countries. Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that the Irish coin exceeded the English in fineness of metal. As to the King's prerogative for granting such patents, Walpole himself explained in a letter to Lord Townshend, then in Hanover with the King, that it was one never disputed and often exercised. The granting of this patent, and the mode of supplying the deficiency in copper coin, might seem little open to objection; but the Irish Privy Council at once declared against the whole transaction. Both Houses of the Irish Parliament passed addresses to the King, declaring that the introduction of Wood's coinage would be injurious to the revenue and positively destructive of trade. The Irish Lord Chancellor set himself sternly against the patent in private, and urged all his friends, comrades, and dependents, to act publicly against it. The addresses from the two Houses of Parliament were sent to Walpole, who transmitted them to Lord Townshend. Walpole accompanied the addresses with an explanation in which he vindicated the policy represented by the granting of the patent, and insisted that no harm whatever could be done to the trade or revenue of Ireland by the introduction of the new copper coinage. Walpole advised that the King should return a soothing and a conciliatory reply to the addresses, and the King acted accordingly. It seemed at one time probable that a satisfactory compromise would be arranged between the Irish Parliament and King George's ministers. This hope, however, was soon dispelled.

One objection felt by the Irish people in general to the patent and the new coinage was founded on the discovery of the fact that Wood had agreed to pay a large bribe to the Duchess of Kendal for her influence in obtaining the patent for him. The objection of the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament was mainly based on the fact that Dublin had not been consulted in the arrangement of the business. The ministers in London {242} settled the whole affair, and then simply communicated the nature of the arrangement to Dublin. Wood himself was unpopular, so far as anything could be known of him, in Ireland. He was a stranger to Ireland, and he was represented to be a boastful, arrogant man, who went about saying he could do anything he liked with Walpole, and that he would cram his copper coins down the throats of the Irish people. All these objections, however, might have been got over but for the sudden appearance of an unexpected and a powerful actor on the scene. One morning appeared in Dublin "A letter to the shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of Ireland, concerning the brass halfpence coined by one William Wood, hardwareman, with a design to have them pass in this kingdom; wherein is shown the power of his patent, the value of his halfpence, and how far every person may be obliged to take the same in payments; and how to behave himself in case such an attempt should be made by Wood or any other person." The letter was signed "M. B., Drapier." This was the first of those famous "Drapier's Letters" which convulsed Ireland with a passion like that preceding a great popular insurrection. It may be questioned whether the pamphlets of a literary politician ever before or since worked with so powerful an influence on the mind of a nation as these marvellous letters.

[Sidenote: 1724—Swift's sincerity]

The author of "The Drapier's Letters," we need hardly say, was Dean Swift. Swift had for some years withdrawn himself from the political world. He is described by one of his biographers as having "amused himself for three or four years with poetry, conversation, and trifles." Now and then, however, he published some letter which showed his interest in the condition of the people among whom he lived; his proposal, for example, "for the universal use of Irish manufacture in clothes and furniture of houses, etc.," was written in the year 1720. This letter—the printer of which was subjected to a Government prosecution—contains a passage which has been, perhaps, {243} more often and more persistently misquoted than any other observation of any author we can now remember. It seems to have become an article of faith with many writers and most readers that Swift said, "Burn everything that comes from England, except its coals." Without much hope of correcting that false impression so far as the bulk of the reading and quoting public is concerned, we may observe that Swift never said anything of the kind. This is what he did say: "I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody's that 'Ireland would never be happy until a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals.' I must confess that, as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home, and, for the latter, I hope in a little time we shall have no occasion for them." Swift was not an Irish patriot; he was not, indeed, an Irishman at all, except by the accident of birth, and now by the accident of residence. He did not love the country; he would not have lived there a week if he could. He had no affection for the people, and, at first, very little sympathy with them. He was always angry if anybody regarded him as an Irishman. His friends were all found among what may be described as the English and Protestant colony in Ireland. He felt towards the native Irish—the Irish Catholics—very much as the official of an English Government might feel towards some savage tribe whom he had been sent out to govern. But at the same time it is an entire mistake to represent Swift as insincere in the efforts which he made to ameliorate the condition of the Irish people, and to redress some of the gross wrongs which he saw inflicted on them. The administrator of whom we have already spoken might have gone out to the savage country with nothing but contempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane and a just man, it would be natural for him as time went on to feel keenly if any injustice were inflicted on the poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up {244} with indignation as their defender and their champion. So it was with Swift. [Sidenote: 1724—The drapier's arguments] Little as he liked the Irish people in the beginning, yet he had a temper and a spirit which made him intolerant of injustice and oppression. That fierce indignation described by himself, and of which such store was always laid up in his heart, was roused to its highest point of heat by the sight of the miseries of the Irish people and of the frequent acts of neglect and injustice by which their misery was deepened. He felt the most sincere resentment at the arbitrary manner in which the Government in London were dealing with Ireland in the matter of Wood's patent and Wood's copper coin. Swift, of course, knew well by what influence the patent had been obtained, and he knew that when obtained it had been simply thrust upon the Irish authorities, Parliament, and people without any previous sanction or knowledge on their part. Very likely he was also convinced, or had convinced himself, that the patent and the new coin would be injurious to the revenues and the trade of the country. Certainly, if he was not convinced of this, he gave to all his diatribes against Wood, Wood's patent, and Wood's halfpence the tones of profoundest conviction. He assumed the character of a draper for the moment—why he chose to spell draper "drapier" nobody knew—and he certainly succeeded in putting on all the semblance of an honest trader driven to homely and robust indignation by an impudent proposal to injure the business of himself and his neighbors. In England, he says, "the halfpence and farthings pass for very little more than they are worth, and if you should beat them to pieces and sell them to the brazier, you would not lose much above a penny in a shilling." But he goes on to say that Mr. Wood, whom he describes as "a mean, ordinary man, a hardware dealer"—Wood was, as we have already seen, a large owner of iron and copper mines and works, but that was all one to Dean Swift—"made his halfpence of such base metal, and so much smaller than the English ones, that the brazier would hardly give you {245} above a penny of good money for a shilling of his; so that this sum of one hundred and eight thousand pounds in good gold and silver may be given for trash that will not be worth above eight or nine thousand pounds real value." Nor is even this the worst, he contends, "for Mr. Wood, when he pleases, may by stealth send over another hundred and eight thousand pounds and buy all our goods for eleven parts in twelve under the value." "For example," says Swift, "if a hatter sells a dozen of hats for five shillings apiece, which amounts to three pounds, and receives the payment in Wood's coin, he really receives only the value of five shillings." Of course this is the wildest exaggeration—is, in fact, mere extravagance and absurdity, if regarded as a financial proposition. But Swift understood, as hardly any other man understood, the art of employing exaggeration with such an effect as to make it do the business of unquestionable fact. He was able to make his literary coins pass for much more than Wood could do with his halfpence and farthings. The artistic skill which bade the creatures whom Gulliver saw in his travels seem real, life-like, and living, made the fantastic extravagance of the "Drapier's Letters" strike home with all the force of truth to the minds of an excited populace.

Many biographers and historians have expressed a blank and utter amazement at the effect which Swift's letters produced. They have chosen to regard it as a mere historical curiosity, a sort of political paradox and puzzle. They have described the Irish people at the time as under the spell of something like sorcery. Even in our own days, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered to the House of Commons, treated the convulsion caused by Swift's letters and Wood's halfpence as an outbreak of national frenzy, called up by the witchery of style displayed in the "Drapier's Letters." To some of us it is, on the other hand, a matter of surprise to see how capable writers, and especially how a man of Mr. Gladstone's genius and political knowledge, could for a moment be thus deceived. {246} One is almost inclined to think that Mr. Gladstone could not have been reading the "Drapier's Letters" recently, when he thus spoke of the effect which they produced, and thus was willing to explain it. [Sidenote: 1724—The drapier's victory] Any one who reads the letters with impartial attention will see that from first to last the anger that burns in them, the sarcasm that withers and scorches, the passionate eloquence which glows in even their most carefully measured sentences, are directed against Wood and his halfpence only because the patent, the bribe by which it was purchased, and the manner in which it was forced on Ireland, represented the injustice of the whole system of Irish administration, and the wrongs of many generations. "It would be very hard if all Ireland," Swift declares with indignation, "should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other." "I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks," the Drapier declares, "and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with my neighbors, the butchers and bakers and brewers, and the rest, goods for goods; and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart's blood till better times, or until I am just ready to starve." "Wood's contract?" he asks. "His contract with whom? Was it with the Parliament or people of Ireland?" The reader who believes that such a passage as that, and scores of similar passages, were inspired merely by disapproval of the introduction of one hundred and eight thousand pounds in copper coin, must have very little understanding of Swift's temper or Swift's purpose, or the condition of the times in which Swift lived. "I will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or house-breakers, if they dare to force one farthing of their coin on me in the payment of a hundred pounds. It is no loss of honor to submit to the lion, but who in the figure of a man can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat?" . . . "If the famous Mr. Hampden rather chose to go to prison than pay a few shillings to King Charles I., without authority of Parliament, I will {247} rather choose to be hanged than have all my substance taxed at seventeen shillings in the pound, at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood." Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, did not observe this allusion to "the famous Mr. Hampden." If he had done so, he would have better understood the inspiration of the "Drapier's Letters." Mr. Hampden was not so ignorant a man as to believe that the mere collection of the ship-money—the mere withdrawal of so much money from the pockets of certain tax-payers—would really ruin the trade and imperil the national existence of England. What Mr. Hampden objected to, and would have resisted to the death, was the unconstitutional and despotic system which the levy of the ship-money represented. The American colonists did not rise in rebellion against the Government of George III. merely because they had eaten of the insane root, and fancied that a trifling tax upon tea would destroy the trade of Boston and New York. They rose in arms against the principle represented by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should have been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their senses for a season.

Swift followed up his first letter by others in rapid succession. Lord Carteret arrived in Ireland when the agitation was at its height. He issued a proclamation against the "Drapier's Letters," offered a reward of three hundred pounds for the discovery of the author, and had the printer arrested. The Grand Jury, however, unanimously threw out the bill sent up against Harding, the printer. Another Grand Jury passed a presentment against all persons who should by fraud or otherwise impose Wood's copper coins upon the public. This {248} presentment is said to have been drawn up by Swift's own hand. Lord Carteret at last had the good-sense to perceive, and the spirit to acknowledge, that there was no alternative between concession and rebellion. He strongly urged his convictions on the Government, and the Government had the wisdom to yield. The patent was withdrawn, a pension was given to Wood in consideration of the loss he had sustained, and Swift was the object of universal gratitude, enthusiasm, love, and devotion, on the part of the Irish nation. Many a patriotic Irishman would fain believe to this very day that Swift, too, was Irish, and an Irish patriot. Ireland certainly has not yet forgotten, probably never will forget, the successful stand made by Swift against what he believed to be an insult to the Irish nation, when he took up his pen to write the first of the Drapier's immortal Letters.