The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. - Volume 07 Historical and Political Tracts-Irish — Key Ideas to Explore

ingbroke 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 to receive a Protestant instruction; her agriculture was degraded to the degree that cattle could not be exported nor the wool sold or shipped from her own ports to other countries; her towns swarmed with beggars and thieves, forced there by the desolation which prevailed in the country districts, where people starved by the wayside, and where those who lived barely kept body and soul together to pay the rents of the absentee landlords.

Swift 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.