Could I from the building’s top
Hear the rattling thunder drop,
While the devil upon the roof
(If the devil be thunder-proof)
Should with poker fiery red
Crack the stones and melt the lead,
Drive them down on every skull
When the den of thieves is full;
Quite destroy the harpies’ nest,
How might this our isle be blest!
What follows fully keeps up to this level. Swift flings filth like a maniac, plunges into ferocious personalities, and ends fitly with the execration,—
May their God, the devil, confound them.
He was seized with one of his fits whilst writing the poem and was never afterwards capable of sustained composition.
Some further pamphlets—especially one on the State of Ireland—repeat and enforce his views. One of them requires special mention. The Modest Proposal (written in 1729) for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country—the proposal being that they should be turned into articles of food—gives the very essence of Swift’s feeling, and is one of the most tremendous pieces of satire in existence. It shows the quality already noticed. Swift is burning with a passion, the glow of which makes other passions look cold, as it is said that some bright lights cause other illuminating objects to cast a shadow. Yet his face is absolutely grave, and he details his plan as calmly as a modern projector suggesting the importation of Australian meat. The superficial coolness may be revolting to tender-hearted people, and has indeed led to condemnation of the supposed ferocity of the author almost as surprising as the criticisms which can see in it nothing but an exquisite piece of humour. It is, in truth, fearful to read even now. Yet we can forgive and even sympathize when we take it for what it really is—the most complete expression of burning indignation against intolerable wrongs. It utters, indeed, a serious conviction. “I confess myself,” says Swift in a remarkable paper,[72] “to be touched with a very sensible pleasure when I hear of a mortality in any country parish or village, where the wretches are forced to pay for a filthy cabin and two ridges of potatoes treble the worth; brought up to steal and beg for want of work; to whom death would be the best thing to be wished for, on account both of themselves and the public.” He remarks in the same place on the lamentable contradiction presented in Ireland to the maxim that the “people are the riches of a nation,” and the Modest Proposal is the fullest comment on this melancholy reflection. After many visionary proposals, he has at last hit upon the plan, which has at least the advantage that by adopting it “we can incur no danger of disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up a whole nation without it.”
Swift once asked Delany[73] whether the “corruptions and villanies of men in power did not eat his flesh and exhaust his spirits?” “No,” said Delany. “Why, how can you help it?” said Swift. “Because,” replied Delany, “I am commanded to the contrary—fret not thyself because of the ungodly.” That, like other wise maxims, is capable of an ambiguous application. As Delany took it, Swift might perhaps have replied that it was a very comfortable maxim—for the ungodly. His own application of Scripture is different. It tells us, he says, in his proposal for using Irish manufactures, that “oppression makes a wise man mad.” If, therefore, some men are not mad, it must be because they are not wise. In truth, it is characteristic of Swift that he could never learn the great lesson of submission even to the inevitable. He could not, like an easy-going Delany, submit to oppression which might possibly be resisted with success; but as little could he submit when all resistance was hopeless. His rage, which could find no better outlet, burnt inwardly and drove him mad. It is very interesting to compare Swift’s wrathful denunciations with Berkeley’s treatment of the same before in the Querist (1735-7). Berkeley is full of luminous suggestions upon economical questions which are entirely beyond Swift’s mark. He is in a region quite above the sophistries of the Drapier’s Letters. He sees equally the terrible grievance that no people in the world is so beggarly, wretched, and destitute as the common Irish. But he thinks all complaints against the English rule useless and therefore foolish. If the English restrain our trade ill-advisedly, is it not, he asks, plainly our interest to accommodate ourselves to them (No. 136)? Have we not the advantage of English protection without sharing English responsibilities? He asks, “whether England doth not really love us and wish well to us as bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh? and whether it be not our part to cultivate this love and affection all manner of ways?” (Nos. 322, 323.) One can fancy how Swift must have received this characteristic suggestion of the admirable Berkeley, who could not bring himself to think ill of any one. Berkeley’s main contention is no doubt sound in itself, namely, that the welfare of the country really depended on the industry and economy of its inhabitants, and that such qualities would have made the Irish comfortable in spite of all English restrictions and Government abuses. But, then, Swift might well have answered that such general maxims are idle. It is all very well for divines to tell people to become good and to find out that then they will be happy. But how are they to be made good? Are the Irish intrinsically worse than other men, or is their laziness and restlessness due to special and removable circumstances? In the latter case is there not more real value in attacking tangible evils than in propounding general maxims and calling upon all men to submit to oppression, and even to believe in the oppressor’s good-will in the name of Christian charity? To answer those questions would be to plunge into interminable and hopeless controversies. Meanwhile Swift’s fierce indignation against English oppression might almost as well have been directed against a law of nature for any immediate result. Whether the rousing of the national spirit was any benefit is a question which I must leave to others. In any case, the work, however darkened by personal feeling or love of class-privilege, expressed as hearty a hatred of oppression as ever animated a human being.
CHAPTER VIII.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS.