Jonathan Swift

“ How would such a proposal sound from France or Spain or any other country we deal with, if they should offer to deal with us only upon this condition, that we should take their money at ten times higher than the intrinsic value? Does Mr. Wood think, for instance, that we will sell him a stone of wool for a parcel of his counters not worth sixpence, when we can send it to England and receive as many shillings in gold and silver? Surely there was never heard such a compound of impudence, villainy and folly. ”

“ And to make it stronger if possible, that the whole nation, almost to a man, should thereupon discover the "most dismal apprehensions" (as Mr. Wood styles them) would His Majesty debate half an hour what he had to do? Would any minister dare advise him against recalling such a patent? Or would the matter be referred to the Privy-Council or to Westminster-hall, the two Houses of Parliament plaintiffs, and William Wood defendant? And is there even the smallest difference between the two cases?
Were not the people of Ireland born as free as those of England? ”

“ If a physician prescribes to a patient a dram of physic, shall a rascal apothecary cram him with a pound, and mix it up with poison? And is not a landlord's hand and seal to his own labourers a better security for five or ten shillings, than Wood's brass seven times below the real value, can be to the kingdom, for an hundred and four thousand pounds? ”

“ Now it is most certain the ministers in England do not suppose the consequences of uttering that brass among us to be so ruinous as we apprehend; because doubtless if they understood it in that light, they are persons of too much honour and justice not to use their credit with His Majesty for saving a most loyal kingdom from destruction. But as long as it shall please those great persons to think that coin will not be so very pernicious to us, we lie under the disadvantage of being censured as obstinate in not complying with a royal patent. ”

“ Who are his supporters, abettors, encouragers, or sharers? Mr. Wood will oblige me to take fivepence halfpenny of his brass in every payment! And I will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or housebreakers, if they dare to force one farthing of their coin upon me in the payment of an hundred pounds. It is no loss of honour to submit to the lion, but who, with the figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat. He has laid a tax upon the people of Ireland of seventeen shillings at least in the pound ”

“ Was it not, because it was represented to his sacred Majesty, that such a coinage would be of advantage to the good of this kingdom, and of all his subjects here? It is to the patentee's peril if his representation be false, and the execution of his patent be fraudulent and corrupt. Is he so wicked and foolish to think that his patent was given him to ruin a million and a half of people, that he might be a gainer of three or four score thousand pounds to himself? ”

“ It ended, as all such governments must inevitably end, in impoverishing the people, in wholesale emigration, in starvation and even death, in revolt, and in fostering among those who remained, and among those whom circumstances exiled, the dangerous spirit of resentment and rebellion which is the outcome of the sense of injustice. It has also served, even to this day, to give vitality to those associations that have from time to time arisen in Ireland for the object of realizing that country's self-government. ”

“ But who are these merchants and traders of Ireland that make this report of "the utmost necessity we are under of copper money"? They are only a few betrayers of their country, confederates with Wood, from whom they are to purchase a great quantity of his coin, perhaps at half value, and vend it among us to the ruin of the public, and their own private advantage. Are not these excellent witnesses, upon whose integrity the fate of a kingdom must depend, who are evidences in their own cause, and sharers in this work of iniquity? ”

“ Now, I should be heartily glad if some able lawyers would prescribe the limits, how far a private man may venture in delivering his thoughts upon public matters: Because a true lover of his country, may think it hard to be a quiet stander-by, and an indolent looker-on, while a public error prevails; by which a whole nation may be ruined. Every man who enjoys property, hath some share in the public; and therefore, the care of the public is, in some degree, every such man's concern. ”

“ Can it be denied, or doubted, that His Majesty's ministers understood and proposed the same end, the good of this nation, when they advised the passing this patent? Can the person of Wood be otherwise regarded, than as the instrument, the mechanic, the head-workman, to prepare his furnace, his fuel, his metal, and his stamps? If I employ a shoe-boy, is it in view to his advantage, or to my own convenience? ”

“ Surely His Majesty, when he consented to the passing of this patent, conceived he was doing an act of grace to his most loyal subjects of Ireland, without any regard to Mr. Wood, farther than as an instrument. But the people of Ireland think this patent (intended no doubt for their good) to be a most intolerable grievance, and therefore Mr. Wood can never succeed, without an open avowal that his profit is preferred not only before the interests, but the very safety and being of a great kingdom; and a kingdom distinguished for its loyalty, perhaps above all others upon earth. ”

“ The histories of England, and of most other countries, abound in relating the miserable, and sometimes the most tragical effects, from the abuses of coin; by debasing the metal, by lessening, or enhancing the value upon occasions, to the public loss; of which we have an example, within our own memory in England, and another very lately in France. It is the tenderest point of government, affecting every individual, in the highest degree. When the value of money is arbitrary, or unsettled; no man can well be said to have any property at all ”

“ As my intention is only to lay before your great assemblies, the general wishes of the nation; and as I have already declared it our principal wish that your first proceeding would be to examine into the pernicious fraud of William Wood; so I must add, as the universal opinion, that all schemes of commutation, composition, and the like expedients, either avowed or implied, will be of the most pernicious consequences to the public; against the dignity of a free kingdom; and prove an encouragement to future adventurers in the same destructive projects. ”

“ If Sir Edward Coke should positively assert (which he nowhere does, but the direct contrary) that a limited prince, could by his prerogative oblige his subjects to take half an ounce of lead, stamped with his image, for twenty shillings in gold, I should swear he was deceived or a deceiver, because a power like that, would leave the whole lives and fortunes of the people entirely at the mercy of the monarch: Yet this, in effect, is what Wood hath advanced in some of his papers, and what suspicious people may possibly apprehend from some passages in that which is called the "Report." ”

“ It is a strange doctrine that men must sacrifice the law to secure their properties, if the law is to be fashioned for every occasion, if grand jurymen contrary to their oaths must discover their fellows' and their own counsels, and betray the trust the law has reposed in them, if they must subject the reasons of their verdicts to the censure of the judges, whom the law did never design to trust with the liberty, property, or good name of their fellow-subjects. ”

“ Harding, yet I intend it for all my countrymen. I have no interest in this affair but what is common to the public. I can live better than many others, I have some gold and silver by me, and a shop well furnished, and shall be able to make a shift when many of my betters are starving. But I am grieved to see the coldness and indifference of many people, with whom I discourse. Some are afraid of a proclamation, others shrug up their shoulders, and cry, "What would you have us do?" Some give out, there is no danger at all. ”

“ I confess, I have been sometimes tempted to wish that this project of Wood might succeed, because I reflected with some pleasure what a jolly crew it would bring over among us of lords and squires, and pensioners of both sexes, and officers civil and military, where we should live together as merry and sociable as beggars, only with this one abatement, that we should neither have meat to feed, nor manufactures to clothe us, unless we could be content to prance about in coats of mail, or eat brass as ostriches do iron. ”

“ It is, I think, in all conscience, latitude enough for vice, if a man in station be allowed to act injustice, upon the usual principles of getting a bribe, wreaking his malice, serving his party, or consulting his preferment; while his wickedness terminates in the ruin only of particular persons: But, to deliver up our whole country, and every living soul who inhabits it, to certain destruction; hath not, as I remember, been permitted by the most favourable casuists on the side of corruption. ”

“ The great ignominy of a whole kingdom, lying so long at mercy, under so vile an adversary, is such a deplorable aggravation, that the utmost expressions of shame and rage, are too low to set it forth; and therefore, I shall leave it to receive such a resentment, as is worthy of a parliament.
It is likewise our universal wish, that His Majesty would grant liberty to coin halfpence in this kingdom, for our own use; under such restrictions as a parliament here shall advise: Since the power of coining even gold and silver, is possessed by every petty prince abroad ”

“ But I would recommend to your friends, who really love their country, to consider the several circumstances concurring in your lordship which probably may not in your successor: Let them suppose a person were to fill your place, from whose manifest ignorance in the law, we may reasonably conclude, his only merit is an inveteracy and hatred to this country. I say how could your best friends excuse themselves, if in regard to your lordship they should suffer such a precedent to be handed down to such a man unobserved or uncensured? ”

“ I am very sensible how ill your lordship is like to be entertained with the pedantry of a drapier in the terms of his own trade. How will the matter be mended, when you find me entering again, though very sparingly, into an affair of state; for such is now grown the controversy with Mr. Wood, if some great lawyers are to be credited. And as it often happens at play, that men begin with farthings, and go on to gold, till some of them lose their estates, and die in jail ”

“ Will any man therefore attempt to persuade me, that a Lord Lieutenant is to be dispatched over in great haste before the ordinary time, and a Parliament summoned by anticipating a prorogation, merely to put an hundred thousand pounds into the pocket of a sharper, by the ruin of a most loyal kingdom. ”

“ But, besides the prodigious profit which England receives by the transmittal thither of two-thirds of the revenues of this whole kingdom; it hath another mighty advantage by making our country a receptacle, wherein to disburthen themselves of their supernumerary pretenders to offices; persons of second-rate merit in their own country; who, like birds of passage, most of them thrive and fatten here, and fly off when their credit and employments are at an end. So that Ireland may justly say what Luther said of himself; POOR Ireland maketh many rich. ”

“ Nor was there ever among us the least attempt towards an insurrection in favour of the Pretender. Therefore whatever justice a free people can claim we have at least an equal title to it with our brethren in England, and whatever grace a good prince can bestow on the most loyal subjects, we have reason to expect it: Neither hath this kingdom any way deserved to be sacrificed to one "single, rapacious, obscure, ignominious projector." ”

“ As to the other paper I must confess it is a sharp censure of an English House of Commons against dissolving grand juries by any judge before the end of the term, assizes, or sessions, while matters are under their consideration, and not presented; is arbitrary, illegal, destructive to public justice, a manifest violation of his oath, and is a means to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom. ”

“ The cultivating and improvement of land, is certainly a subject worthy of the highest enquiry in any country, but especially in ours; where we are so strangely limited in every branch of trade, that can be of advantage to us; and utterly deprived of those, which are of the greatest importance; whereof I defy the most learned man in Europe, to produce me an example from any other kingdom in the world: For, we are denied the benefits which God and nature intended to us ”

“ 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. ”