The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Vol. VI | Page 3

public spirit far outweighed
his private spleen. Above all things Swift loved liberty, integrity,
sincerity and justice; and if it be that it was his love for these, rather
than his love for the country, which inspired him to patriotic efforts,
who shall say that he does not still deserve well of us. If a patriot be a
man who nobly teaches a people to become aware of its highest
functions as a nation, then was Swift a great patriot, and he better
deserves that title than many who have been accorded it.
The matter of Wood's Halfpence was a trivial one in itself; but it was
just that kind of a matter which Swift must instantly have appreciated
as the happiest for his purpose. It was a matter which appealed to the
commonest news-boy on the street, and its meaning once made plain,
the principle which gave vitality to the meaning was ready for
enunciation and was assured of intelligent acceptance. In writing the
"Drapier's Letters," he had, to use his own words, seasonably raised a
spirit among the Irish people, and that spirit he continued to refresh,
until when he told them in his Fourth Letter, "by the Laws of God, of
Nature, of Nations, and of your Country, you are, and ought to be, as
free a people as your brethren in England," the country rose as one man
to the appeal. Neither the suavities of Carteret nor the intrigues of
Walpole had any chance against the set opposition which met them.
The question to be settled was taken away from the consideration of
ministers, and out of the seclusion of Cabinets into the hands of the
People, and before the public eye. There was but one way in which it
could be settled--the way of the people's will--and it went that way. It
does not at all matter that Walpole finally had his way--that the King's
mistress pocketed her _douceur_, and that Wood retired satisfied with
the ample compensation allowed him. What does matter is that, for the
first time in Irish History, a spirit of national life was breathed into an

almost denationalized people. Beneath the lean and starved ribs of
death Swift planted a soul; it is for this that Irishmen will ever revere
his memory.
In the composition of the "Letters" Swift had set himself a task
peculiarly fitting to his genius. Those qualities of mind which enabled
him to enter into the habits of the lives of footmen, servants, and
lackeys found an even more congenial freedom of play here. His
knowledge of human nature was so profound that he instinctively
touched the right keys, playing on the passions of the common people
with a deftness far surpassing in effect the acquired skill of the mere
master of oratory. He ordered his arguments and framed their language,
so that his readers responded with almost passionate enthusiasm to the
call he made upon them. Allied to his gift of intellectual sympathy with
his kind was a consummate ability in expression, into which he
imparted the fullest value of the intended meaning. His thought lost
nothing in its statement. Writing as he did from the point of view of a
tradesman, to the shopkeepers, farmers, and common people of Ireland,
his business was to speak with them as if he were one of them. He had
already laid bare their grievances caused by the selfish legislation of the
English Parliament, which had ruined Irish manufactures; he had
written grimly of the iniquitous laws which had destroyed the woollen
trade of the country; he had not forgotten the condition of the people as
he saw it on his journeys from Dublin to Cork--a condition which he
was later to reveal in the most terrible of his satirical tracts--and he
realized with almost personal anguish the degradation of the people
brought about by the rapacity and selfishness of a class which governed
with no thought of ultimate consequences, and with no apparent
understanding of what justice implied. It was left for him to precipitate
his private opinion and public spirit in such form as would arouse the
nation to a sense of self-respect, if not to a pitch of resentment. The
"Drapier's Letters" was the reagent that accomplished both.
* * * * *
The editor takes this opportunity to express his thanks and obligations
to Mr. G.R. Dennis, to Mr. W. Spencer Jackson, to the late Colonel F.R.
Grant, to Mr. C. Litton Falkiner of Killiney, and to Mr. O'Donoghue of
Dublin. His acknowledgment is here also made to Mr. Strickland, of
the National Gallery of Ireland, to whose kindness and learning he is

greatly indebted.
TEMPLE SCOTT.
NEW YORK, _March_, 1903.

CONTENTS
LETTER I. TO THE SHOPKEEPERS, TRADESMEN, FARMERS,
AND COMMON-PEOPLE OF IRELAND
LETTER II.