The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII | Page 4

has himself, in the pamphlets printed in the present volume, given a fairly accurate and no exaggerated account of the miserable condition of his country at this time; and his writings are amply corroborated by other men who might be considered less passionate and more temperate.
The people had become degraded through the evil influence of a contemptuous and spendthrift landlord class, who considered the tenant in no other light than as a rent-paying creature. As Roman Catholics they found themselves the social inferiors of the ruling Protestant class--the laws had placed them in that invidious position. They were practically without any defence. They were ignorant, poor, and half-starved. Thriftless, like their landlords, they ate up in the autumn what harvests they gathered, and begged for their winter's support. Adultery and incest were common and bred a body of lawless creatures, who herded together like wild beasts and became dangerous pests.
Swift knew all this. He had time, between the years 1714 and 1720, to find it out, even if he had not known of it before. But the condition was getting worse, and his heart filled, as he told Pope in 1728, with a "perfect rage and resentment" at "the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live."
He commenced what might be called a campaign of attack in 1720, with the publication of his tract entitled, "A Modest Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures." As has been pointed out in the notes prefixed to the pamphlets in the present volume, England had, apparently, gone to work systematically to ruin Irish manufactures. They seemed to threaten ruin to English industries; at least so the people in England thought. The pernicious legislation began in the reign of Charles II. and continued in that of William III. The Irish manufacturer was not permitted to export his products and found a precarious livelihood in a contraband trade. Swift's "Proposal" is one of retaliation. Since England will not allow Ireland to send out her goods, let the people of Ireland use them, and let them join together and determine to use nothing from England. Everything that came from England should be burned, except the people and the coal. If England had the right to prevent the exportation of the goods made in Ireland, she had not the right to prevent the people of Ireland from choosing what they should wear. The temper of the pamphlet was mild in the extreme; but the governing officials saw in it dangerous symptoms. The pamphlet was stigmatized as libellous and seditious, and the writer as attempting to disunite the two nations. The printer was brought to trial, and the pamphlet obtained a tremendous circulation. Although the jury acquitted the printer, Chief Justice Whitshed, who had, as Swift puts it, "so quick an understanding, that he resolved, if possible, to outdo his orders," sent the jury back nine times to reconsider their verdict. He even declared solemnly that the author's design was to bring in the Pretender. This cry of bringing in the Pretender was raised on any and every occasion, and has been well ridiculed by Swift in his "Examination of Certain Abuses and Corruptions in the City of Dublin." The end of Whitshed's persecution could have been foretold--it fizzled out in a nolle prosequi.
Following on this interesting commencement came the lengthened agitation against Wood's Halfpence to which we owe the remarkable series of writings known now as the "Drapier's Letters." These are fully discussed in the volume preceding this. But Swift found other channels in which to continue rousing the spirit of the people, and refreshing it to further effort. The mania for speculation which Law's schemes had given birth to, reached poor Ireland also. People thought there might be found a scheme on similar lines by which Ireland might move to prosperity. A Bank project was initiated for the purpose of assisting small tradesmen. But a scheme that in itself would have been excellent in a prosperous society, could only end in failure in such a community as peopled Ireland. Swift felt this and opposed the plan in his satirical tract, "The Swearer's Bank." The tract sufficed, for no more was heard of the National Bank after the House of Commons rejected it.
The thieves and "roughs" who infested Dublin came in next for Swift's attention. In characteristic fashion he seized the occasion of the arrest and execution of one of their leaders to publish a pretended "Last Speech and Dying Confession," in which he threatened exposure and arrest to the remainder of the gang if they did not make themselves scarce. The threat had its effect, and the city found itself considerably safer as a consequence.
How Swift pounded out his "rage and resentment" against English misgovernment, may be