The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII

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|Transcriber's Note: This book is a compilation of previously |
|published works and therefore contains some inconsistencies. |
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BOHN'S STANDARD LIBRARY

* * * * *

THE PROSE WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT

VOL. VII

LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS
PORTUGAL ST. LINCOLN'S INN, W. C.
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.

_In 12 volumes, 5s. each._

~THE PROSE WORKS~

OF

~JONATHAN SWIFT, D. D.~

EDITED BY

~TEMPLE SCOTT~

VOL. I. A TALE OF A TUB AND OTHER EARLY WORKS.
Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT. With a biographical introduction by
W. E. H. LECKY, M. P. With Portrait and Facsimiles.

VOL. II. THE JOURNAL TO STELLA. Edited by FREDERICK
RYLAND, M. A. With two Portraits of Stella and a Facsimile of
one of the Letters.

VOLS. III. & IV. WRITINGS ON RELIGION AND THE
CHURCH. Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT. With Portraits and Facsimiles
of Title-pages.

VOL. V. HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL TRACTS--ENGLISH.
Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT. With Portrait and Facsimiles
of Title-pages.

VOL. VI. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS. Edited by TEMPLE
SCOTT. With Portrait, Reproductions of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles
of Title-pages.

VOL. VII. HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL TRACTS--IRISH.
Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT. With Portrait and Facsimiles of Title-pages.

VOL. VIII. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Edited by G. RAVENSCROFT
DENNIS. With Portrait, Maps and Facsimiles.

VOL. IX. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE "EXAMINER,"
"TATLER," "SPECTATOR," &c. Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT.
With Portrait.

VOL. X. HISTORICAL WRITINGS. Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT.
With Portrait.

VOL. XI. LITERARY ESSAYS. Edited by TEMPLE SCOTT.
With Portrait. [_In the press._

VOL. XII. FULL BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX TO COMPLETE
WORKS. Together with an Essay on the Portraits of
Swift, by the HON. SIR FREDERICK FALKINER, K. C. With two
Portraits. [_In the press._

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

"An adequate edition of Swift--the whole of Swift, and nothing but
Swift--has long been one of the pressing needs of students of
English literature. Mr. Temple Scott, who is preparing the new
edition of Swift's Prose Works, has begun well, his first volume is
marked by care and knowledge. He has scrupulously collated his
texts with the first or the best early editions, and has given
various readings in the footnotes.... Mr. Temple Scott may well be
congratulated on his skill and judgment as a commentator.... He has
undoubtedly earned the gratitude of all admirers of our greatest
satirist, and all students of vigorous, masculine, and exact
English."--_Athenaeum._

"The volume is an agreeable one to hold and to refer to, and the
notes and apparatus are, on the whole, exact. A cheap and handy
reprint, which we can conscientiously recommend."--_Saturday
Review._

"From the specimen now before us we may safely predict that Mr.
Temple Scott will easily distance both Roscoe and Scott. He
deserves the gratitude of all lovers of literature for enabling
Swift again to make his bow to the world in so satisfactory and
complete a garb."--_Manchester Guardian._

"Mr. Temple Scott's introductions and notes are excellent in all
respects, and this edition of Swift is likely to be one most
acceptable to scholars."--_Notes and Queries._

"The new Bohn's Library edition of the prose works of Jonathan
Swift is a venture which proves itself the more welcome as each
instalment is issued.... This edition is likely long to remain the
standard edition."--_Literary World._

"'Bohn's Libraries' need no push, and the magnificent edition of
'The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift,' edited by Mr. Temple Scott, is
in every respect worthy of that great collection of classics. It is
an ideal edition, edited by an ideal editor, beautifully printed,
handsomely bound, and ridiculously cheap. I have no hesitation in
saying that this edition supersedes all its forerunners."--_Star._

"We have nothing but praise for the editing, annotating, printing,
and general production. Indeed, now that the set has advanced so
far, we can safely pronounce the opinion that all other editions of
Swift must give place to it, and that no serious student of the
politics of the eighteenth century can afford to be without these
volumes.... A superb edition."--_Irish Times._

"Edited with exhaustive care, and produced in excellent style. This
is not only the best, it is the _only_ edition of Swift."--_Pall
Mall Gazette._

"There could hardly be a more acceptable addition to Bohn's
Standard Library than a new edition of Swift's Prose Works. The
text is well printed, and the volume is of convenient size. The
edition deserves to be popular, since Swift is a writer who will
always be read, while this edition will bring him within reach of a
number of new readers."--_Scotsman._

"The time is now ripe for a definite edition. This, of which the
first volume lies before us, promises to fulfil all the conditions
of a scholarly and satisfying work.... The edition is a genuine
gain to English literature."--_Birmingham Post._

"The publishers of Bohn's Libraries will earn the thanks of a wide
circle of readers by their undertaking to produce a popular and
collected edition of the prose works of Swift.... So far as one
may judge from a first instalment, the present edition seems to
fulfil the requirements of popularity and accuracy as well as could
be desired.... The edition promises to be one of the most valuable
and welcome items in those classic 'Libraries' which have done so
much to bring good literature, in worthy form, within the reach of
the British public."--_Glasgow Herald._

"We are indebted to the proprietors of the Bohn Libraries for
various literary enterprises, but it is questionable indeed if they
have issued lately a work more acceptable, or likely to become more
popular, than 'The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift.' No better
edition of it could be desired. Mr. Temple Scott is editing the
volumes with the greatest care."--_Belfast News Letter._

"No more welcome reprint has appeared for some time past than the
new edition, complete and exact so far as it was possible to make
it, of Swift's 'Journal to Stella.'"--_Morning Post._

"By far the most satisfactory text yet printed of the wonderful
'Journal to Stella.'"--_Newcastle Daily Chronicle._

"The 'Journal to Stella' has long stood in need of editing, far
more than any other of Swift's works. It abounds in references to
persons great and small, to political and social 'occurrents,' to
ephemeral publications; and to identify and explain all these
demands an editor steeped in the history, literature, broadsides
and press news of the time of the Harley administration. Mr.
Ryland's present edition will satisfy all but the few who dream of
an ideal."--_Athenaeum._

"The immortal 'Journal to Stella,' one of the works most
indispensable to a knowledge of the life and literature of the
early part of the eighteenth century. We know of no shape in which
the Journal is published so convenient for perusal as this. The
notes are short and serviceable, and there is a full
index."--_Notes and Queries._

"At last we have a well-printed, carefully edited text of Swift's
famous Journal in a single, handy, and cheap volume. The present
edition will, we hope, encourage many timid souls, who have been
awed by the formidable array of Scott, Sheridan, or Hawkesworth's
editions, to make the acquaintance of the most interesting,
charming, and tender journal that ever man kept for a woman's
eye."--_St. James's Gazette._

"Mr. Dennis is quite justified in his boast of now first giving us
a complete and trustworthy text [of 'Gulliver's
Travels']."--_Manchester Guardian._

"The number of useless reprints of Gulliver, based on Hawkesworth's
untrustworthy edition, and mostly expurgated besides, is so great
that we owe double thanks to Mr. Dennis, since he has not shirked
the trouble of collating the five earliest editions, and has given
us again at last--as far as is possible in the present case--the
complete and authentic text of the original."--PROF. MAX
FOeRSTER in _Anglia_.

"An ideal text of 'Gulliver's Travels.'"--_Literary World._

"The best and most scholarly edition of 'Gulliver's
Travels.'"--_University Correspondent._

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Jonathan Swift_

_From an engraving by Andrew Miller after the painting by Francis Bindon
in the Deanery of St. Patrick's Dublin._]

THE PROSE WORKS

OF

JONATHAN SWIFT, D. D.

EDITED BY

TEMPLE SCOTT.

VOL. VII

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL TRACTS--IRISH

LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1905
CHISWICK PRESS. CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,
LONDON.

INTRODUCTION

Swift took up his permanent residence in the Irish capital in 1714. The
Harley Administration had fallen never to rise again. Harley himself was
a prisoner in the Tower, and Bolingbroke a voluntary exile in France,
and an open adherent of the Pretender. Swift came to Dublin to be met by
the jeers of the populace, the suspicion of the government officials,
and the polite indifference of his clerical colleagues. He had time
enough now in which to reflect and employ his brain powers. 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 (L1,000) 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 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.

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 further read in the "Story of the Injured Lady,"
and in the "Answer" to that story. The Injured Lady is Ireland, who
tells her lover, England, of her attractions, and upbraids him on his
conduct towards her. In the "Answer" Swift tells the Lady what she ought
to do, and hardly minces matters. Let her show the right spirit, he says
to her, and she will find there are many gentlemen who will support her
and champion her cause.

Then came the plain, pathetic, and truthful recital of the "Short View
of the State of Ireland"--a pamphlet of but a few pages and yet terribly
effective. As an historical document it takes rank with the experiences
of the clergymen, Skelton and Jackson, as well as the more dispassionate
writings of contemporary historians. It is frequently cited by Lecky in
his "History of Ireland."

What Swift had so far left undone, either from political reasons or from
motives of personal restraint, he completed in what may, without
exaggeration, be called his satirical masterpiece--the "Modest Proposal
for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to their
Parents." Nothing comparable to this piece of writing is to be found in
any literature; while the mere fact that it came into being must stand
as one of the deadliest indictments against England's misrule.
Governments and rulers have been satirized time and again, but no
similar condition of things has existed with a Swift living at the time,
to observe and comment on them. The tract itself must be read with a
knowledge of the Irish conditions then prevailing; its temper is so calm
and restrained that a reader unacquainted with the conditions might be
misled and think that the author of "Gulliver's Travels" was indulging
himself in one of his grim jokes. That it was not a joke its readers at
the time well knew, and many of them also knew how great was the
indignation which raged in Swift's heart to stir him to so unprecedented
an expression of contempt. He had, as he himself said, raged and stormed
only to find himself stupefied. In the "Modest Proposal" he changed his
tune and

... with raillery to nettle,
Set your thoughts upon their mettle.

Swift has been censured for the cold-blooded cynicism of this piece of
writing, but these censurers have entirely misunderstood both his motive
and his meaning. We wonder how any one could take seriously a proposal
for breeding children for food purposes, and our wonder grows in
reflecting on an inability to see through the thin veil of satire which
barely hid an impeachment of a ruling nation by the mere statement of
the proposal itself. That a Frenchman should so misunderstand it (as a
Frenchman did) may not surprise us, but that any Englishman should so
take it argues an utter absence of humour and a total ignorance of Irish
conditions at the time the tract was written. But history has justified
Swift, and it is to his writings, rather than to the many works written
by more commonplace observers, that we now turn for the true story of
Ireland's wrongs, and the real sources of her continued attitude of
hostility towards England's government of her.

It has been well noted by one of Swift's biographers, that for a
thousand readers which the "Modest Proposal" has found, there is perhaps
only one who is acquainted with Swift's "Answer to the Craftsman." It
may be that the title is misleading or uninviting; but there is no
question that this tract may well stand by the side of the "Modest
Proposal," both for force of argument and pungency of satire. In its way
and within the limits of its more restricted argument it is one of the
ablest pieces of writing Swift has given us on behalf of Irish liberty.

The title of Irish patriot which Swift obtained was not sought for by
him. It was given him mainly for the part he played, and for the success
he achieved in the Wood's patent agitation. He was acclaimed the
champion of the people, because he had stopped the foolish manoeuvres
of the Walpole Administration. So to label him, however, would be to do
him an injustice. In truth, he would have championed the cause of
liberty and justice in any country in which he lived, had he found
liberty and justice wanting there. The matter of the copper coinage
patent was but a peg for him to hang arguments which applied almost
everywhere. It was not to the particular arguments but to the spirit
which gave them life that we must look for the true value of Swift's
work. And that spirit--honest, brave, strong for the right--is even more
abundantly displayed in the writings we have just considered. They
witness to his championship of liberty and justice, to his impeachment
of selfish office-holders and a short-sighted policy. They gave him his
position as the chief among the citizens of Dublin to whom he spoke as
counsel and adviser. They proclaim him as the friend of the common
people, to whom he was more than the Dean of St. Patrick's. He may have
begun his work impelled by a hatred for Whiggish principles; but he
undoubtedly accomplished it in the spirit of a broad-minded and
far-seeing statesman. The pressing needs of Ireland were too urgent and
crying for him to permit his personal dislike of the Irish natives to
divert him from his humanitarian efforts. If he hated the beggar he was
ready with his charity. The times in which he lived were not times in
which, as he told the freemen of Dublin, "to expect such an exalted
degree of virtue from mortal men." He was speaking to them of the
impossibility of office-holders being independent of the government
under which they held their offices. "Blazing stars," he said, "are much
more frequently seen than such heroical virtues." As the Irish people
were governed by such men he advised them strongly to choose a
parliamentary representative from among themselves. He insisted on the
value of their collected voice, their unanimity of effort, a
consciousness of their understanding of what they wished to bring about.
"Be independent" is the text of all his writings to the people of
Ireland. It is idle to appeal to England's clemency or England's
justice. It is vain to evolve social schemes and Utopian dreams. The
remedy lay in their own hands, if the people only realized it.

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