Jonathan Swift

“ I do not blame an honest gentleman for the bitterest invectives against one to whom he professeth the greatest friendship; provided he acts in the dark, so as not to be discovered. But in the midst of caresses, visits, and invitations, to run into the streets, or to as public a place, and without the least pretended excitement, sputter out the basest and falsest accusations; then to wipe his mouth, come up smiling to his friend, shake him by the hand, and tell him in a whisper, it was "all for his service;" this proceeding, I am bold to think a great failure in prudence ”

“ Is not this more than doubly the case of Ireland, where the want of money, the irrecoverable ruin of trade, with the other evils above mentioned, and many more too well known and felt, and too numerous or invidious to relate, have been gradually sinking us for above a dozen years past, to a degree that we are at least by two thirds in a worse condition than was ever known since the Revolution? Therefore instead of dreams and projects for the advancing of trade, we have nothing left but to find out some expedient whereby we may reduce our expenses to our incomes. ”

“ God be thanked, we have had many a change of ministry without changing our prince: for if it had been otherwise, perhaps revolutions might have been more frequent. Heaven forbid that the welfare of a great kingdom, and of a brave people, should be trusted with the thread of a single subject's life; for I suppose it is not yet in your view to entail the ministryship in your family. Thus I hope we may live to see different ministers and different measures, without any danger to the succession in the royal Protestant line of Hanover. ”

“ For as to your scheme of raising one hundred and ten thousand pounds, it is as vain as that of Rabelais; which was, to squeeze out wind from the posteriors of a dead ass.
But why all this concern for the poor? We want them not, as the country is now managed; they may follow thousands of their leaders, and seek their bread abroad. Where the plough has no work, one family can do the business of fifty, and you may send away the other forty-nine. An admirable piece of husbandry, never known or practised by the wisest nations, who erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country! ”

“ They all look upon such an obligation as a high indignity done to their office. I appeal to all indifferent people, whether such wretches deserve to be relieved. As to myself, I must confess, this absurd insolence hath so affected me, that for several years past, I have not disposed of one single farthing to a street beggar, nor intend to do so, until I see a better regulation; and I have endeavoured to persuade all my brother-walkers to follow my example, which most of them assure me they do. For, if beggary be not able to beat out pride, it cannot deserve charity. ”

“ This is the modern way of planting Colonies—Et ubi solitudinem faciunt, id Imperium vocant. When those who are so unfortunate to be born here, are excluded from the meanest preferments, and deemed incapable of being entertained even as common soldiers, whose poor stipend is but four pence a day. No trade, no emoluments, no encouragement for learning among the natives, who yet by a perverse consequence are divided into factions, with as much violence and rancour, as if they had the wealth of the Indies to contend for. ”

“ You shall hear no clamour or complaints: Your senate shall, upon occasions, declare you the best of princes, the father of your country, the arbiter of Asia, the defender of the oppressed, and the delight of mankind.
"Sir, Hear not those who would most falsely, impiously, and maliciously insinuate, that your government can be carried on without that wholesome, necessary expedient, of sharing the public revenue with your faithful deserving senators. This, I know, my enemies are pleased to call bribery and corruption. ”

“ Now if all this be true, upon which I could easily enlarge, I would be glad to know by what secret method it is that we grow a rich and flourishing people, without liberty, trade, manufactures, inhabitants, money, or the privilege of coining; without industry, labour or improvement of lands, and with more than half of the rent and profits of the whole Kingdom, annually exported, for which we receive not a single farthing: And to make up all this, nothing worth mentioning, except the linen of the North, a trade casual, corrupted, and at mercy, and some butter from Cork. ”

“ It is absolutely so in fact that every husband of any fortune in the Kingdom is nourishing a poisonous, devouring serpent in his bosom with all the mischief but with none of its wisdom.
If all the women were clad with the growth of their own Country, they might still vie with each other in the cause of foppery, and still have room left to vie with each other, and equally shew their wit and judgment in deciding upon the variety of Irish stuffs ”

“ What if they had sent up such a resolution to be agreed to by the House of Lords, and by their own practice and encouragement spread the execution of it in their several countries? What if we should agree to make burying in woollen a fashion, as our neighbours have made it a law? What if the ladies would be content with Irish stuffs for the furniture of their houses, for gowns and petticoats to themselves and their daughters? Upon the whole, and to crown all the rest: Let a firm resolution be taken by male and female, never to appear with one single shred that comes from England ”

“ I should heartily wish, therefore, under this miserable dearth of money, that those who are most concerned would think it advisable to save a hundred thousand pounds a year, which is now sent out of this kingdom, to feed us with corn. There is not an older or more uncontroverted maxim in the politics of all wise nations, than that of encouraging agriculture: and therefore, to what kind of wisdom a practice so directly contrary among us may be reduced, I am by no means a judge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nay, how many honourable gentlemen might be enumerated, who keep open shop to make a trade of iniquity; who teach the law to wink whenever power or profit appears in her way; and contrive to grow rich by the vice, the contention, or the follies of mankind; and who, nevertheless, instead of being branded with the harsh-sounding names of knaves, pilferers, or public oppressors, (as they justly merit,) are only distinguished by the title of justices of the peace; in which single term, all those several appellations are generally thought to be implied. ”

“ A nation is quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their penmen; while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair. A Frenchman in his wooden shoes may, from the vanity of his nation, and the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure in boasting the grandeur of his monarch, in the midst of his own slavery ”

“ How is it possible that a gentleman who lives in those parts where the town-lands (as they call them) of his estate produce such odious sounds from the mouth, the throat, and the nose, can be able to repeat the words without dislocating every muscle that is used in speaking, and without applying the same tone to all other words, in every language he understands; as it is plainly to be observed not only in those people of the better sort who live in Galway and the Western parts, but in most counties of Ireland? ”

“ I will now apply what I have said to you, my brethren and fellow-citizens. Count upon it, as a truth next to your creed, that no one person in office, of which he is not master for life, whether born here or in England, will ever hazard that office for the good of this country. One of your candidates is of this kind, and I believe him to be an honest gentleman, as the word honest is generally understood. But he loves his employment better than he doth you, or his country, or all the countries upon earth. ”

“ And this is the best argument I can offer in defence of great men, who have been of late so very unhappy in the choice of their paper-champions; although I cannot much commend their good husbandry, in those exorbitant payments of twenty and sixty guineas at a time for a scurvy pamphlet; since the sort of work they require is what will all come within the talents of any one who hath enjoyed the happiness of a very bad education, hath kept the vilest company, is endowed with a servile spirit, is master of an empty purse, and a heart full of malice. ”

“ In the second, which is the industry of the people, our misfortune is not altogether owing to our own fault, but to a million of discouragements.
The conveniency of ports and havens which Nature bestowed us so liberally is of no more use to us, than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon.
As to shipping of its own, this Kingdom is so utterly unprovided, that of all the excellent timber cut down within these fifty or sixty years, it can hardly be said that the Nation hath received the benefit of one valuable house to dwell in, or one ship to trade with. ”

“ If many in England have been ruined by stocks, some have been advanced. The English have a free and open trade to repair their losses; but, above all, a wise, vigilant, and uncorrupted Parliament and ministry, strenuously endeavouring to restore public trade to its former happy state. Whilst we, having lost the greatest part of our cash, without any probability of its returning, must despair of retrieving our losses by trade, and have before our eyes the dismal prospect of universal poverty and desolation. ”

“ Yet notwithstanding all the dismal appearances, it is the common phrase of our upstart race of people, who have suddenly sprang up like the dragon's teeth among us, That Ireland was never known to be so rich as it is now; by which, as I apprehend, they can only mean themselves, for they have skipped over the channel from the vantage ground of a dunghill upon no other merit, either visible or divineable, than that of not having been born among us. ”

“ Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who, without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at the playhouse, and assemblies in foreign fineries, which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.
Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. ”

“ We buy it of the executioner, for the bodies of all public capital offenders are his fees. As soon as the criminal is dead, he cuts the body in pieces, squeezes out the blood, and makes his house a shambles for the flesh of men and women, where all people that can afford it come and buy. ”

“ Shall we who have but a trifling existence, express any resentment, when one of us either dies a natural death, or is slain, whose lives are necessarily of a short duration, when at one view I beheld the carcases of so many great cities?' What if he had seen the natives of those free republics, reduced to all the miserable consequences of a conquered people, living without the common defences against hunger and cold, rather appearing like spectres than men? ”

“ In the common way of thinking, it is a situation sufficient in all conscience to satisfy a reasonable ambition, for a private person to command the forces, the laws, the revenues [Pg 381] of a great kingdom, to reward and advance his followers and flatterers as he pleases, and to keep his enemies (real or imaginary) in the dust. In such an exaltation, why should he be at the trouble to make use of fools to sound his praises, (because I always thought the lion was hard set, when he chose the ass for his trumpeter) or knaves to revenge his quarrels, at the expense of innocent men's reputations? ”

“ What must then a great man do whose ill stars have fatally perverted him to a love, and taste, and possession of literature, politeness, and good sense? Our thorough-sped republic of Whigs, which contains the bulk of all hopers, pretenders, expecters and professors, are, beyond all doubt, most highly useful to princes, to governors, to great ministers, and to their country, but at the same time, and by necessary consequence, the most disagreeable companions to all who have that unfortunate turn of mind peculiar to his Excellency, and perhaps to five or six more in a nation. ”

“ And as the absentees are, in the strongest view, our greatest enemies, first by consuming above one-half of the rents of this nation abroad, and secondly by turning the weight, by their absence, so much on the Popish side, by weakening the Protestant interest, can there be a greater folly than to pave a bridge of gold at your own expense, to support them in their luxury and vanity abroad, while hundreds of thousands are starving at home for want of employment. ”

“ If it should be thought proper by wiser heads, that his Majesty might be applied to in a national way, for giving the kingdom leave to coin halfpence for its own use, I believe no good subject will be under the least apprehension that such a request could meet with refusal, or the least delay. Perhaps we are the only kingdom upon earth, or that ever was or will be upon earth, which did not enjoy that common right of civil society, under the proper inspection of its prince or legislature, to coin money of all usual metals for its own occasions. ”

“ As to the first cause of a Nation's riches, being the fertility of the soil, as well as temperature of climate, we have no reason to complain; for although the quantity of unprofitable land in this Kingdom, reckoning bog, and rock, and barren mountain, be double in proportion to what it is in England, yet the native productions which both Kingdoms deal in, are very near on equality in point of goodness, and might with the same encouragement be as well manufactured. I except mines and minerals, in some of which however we are only defective in point of skill and industry. ”

“ I remember a person of distinction some days ago affirmed in a good deal of mixed company, and of both parties, that the gentry from England, who now enjoy our highest employments of all kinds, can never be possibly losers of one farthing by the greatest calamities that can befall this kingdom, except a plague that would sweep away a million of our hewers of wood and drawers of water, or an invasion that would fright our grandees out of the kingdom. ”