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

For
several years he kept himself altogether to his duties as Dean of the
Cathedral of St. Patrick's, only venturing his pen in letters to dear
friends in England--to Pope, Atterbury, Lady Howard. His private
relations with Miss Hester Vanhomrigh came to a climax, also, during
this period, and his peculiar intimacy with "Stella" Johnson took the
definite shape in which we now know it.
He found himself in debt to his predecessor, Sterne, for a large and
comfortless house and for the cost of his own installation into his office.
The money he was to have received (£1,000) to defray these expenses,
from the last administration, was now, on its fall, kept back from him.
Swift had these encumbrances to pay off and he had his Chapter to see
to. He did both in characteristic fashion. By dint of almost penurious
saving he accomplished the former and the latter he managed
autocratically and with good sense. His connection with Oxford and
Bolingbroke had been of too intimate a nature for those in power to
ignore him. Indeed, his own letters to Knightley Chetwode[1] show us
that he was in great fear of arrest. But there is now no doubt that the
treasonable relations between Harley and St. John and the Pretender
were a great surprise to Swift when they were discovered. He himself
had always been an ardent supporter of the Protestant succession, and
his writings during his later period in Ireland constantly emphasize this
attitude of his--almost too much so.
The condition of Ireland as Swift found it in 1714, and as he had
known of it even before that time, was of a kind to rouse a temper like
his to quick and indignant expression. Even as early as the spring of
1716 we find him unable to restrain himself, and in his letter to

Atterbury of April 18th we catch the spirit which, four years later,
showed itself in "The Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish
Manufactures" and the "Drapier's Letters," and culminated in 1729 in
the terrible "Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor
People from being a Burthen to their Parents." To Atterbury he wrote:
"I congratulate with England for joining with us here in the fellowship
of slavery. It is not so terrible a thing as you imagine: we have long
lived under it: and whenever you are disposed to know how to behave
yourself in your new condition, you need go no further than me for a
director. But, because we are resolved to go beyond you, we have
transmitted a bill to England, to be returned here, giving the
Government and six of the Council power for three years to imprison
whom they please for three months, without any trial or examination:
and I expect to be among the first of those upon whom this law will be
executed."
Writing to Archdeacon Walls[2] (May 5th, 1715) of the people in
power, he said:
"They shall be deceived as far as my power reaches, and shall not find
me altogether so great a cully as they would willingly make me."
At that time England was beginning to initiate a new method for what it
called the proper government of Ireland. Hitherto it had tried the plan
of setting one party in the country against another; but now a new party
was called into being, known as the "English party." This party had
nothing to do with the Irish national spirit, and any man, no matter how
capable, who held by such a national spirit, was to be set aside. There
was to be no Irish party or parties as such--there was to be only the
English party governing Ireland in the interests of England. It was the
beginning of a government which led to the appointment of such a man
as Primate Boulter, who simply ruled Ireland behind the Lord
Lieutenant (who was but a figurehead) for and on behalf of the King of
England's advisers. Irish institutions, Irish ideas, Irish traditions, the
Irish Church, Irish schools, Irish language and literature, Irish trade,
manufactures, commerce, agriculture--all were to be subordinated to
England's needs and England's demands. At any cost almost, these were

to be made subservient to the interests of England. So well was this
plan carried out, that Ireland found itself being governed by a small
English clique and its Houses of Parliament a mere tool in the clique's
hands. The Parliament no longer represented the national will, since it
did really nothing but ratify what the English party asked for, or what
the King's ministers in England instructed should be made law.
Irish manufactures were ruined by legislation; the commerce of Ireland
was destroyed by the same means; her schools became practically
penitentiaries to the Catholic children, who were compelled