As documented in the Introduction to this volume, a total of four separate texts of The Reverberator were produced during James's lifetime. Leaving aside his extensive revision of the novel for publication in Volume 13 of the New York Edition of The Novels and Tales of Henry James (1908), three of these texts were produced within a year of the first documented reference to its conception in November 1887. There is no surviving manuscript of The Reverberator and no record of its submission to James's publisher in the Macmillan Archive. Chronologically, the first version of the novel to commence publication was its serialization in six monthly instalments of Macmillan's Magazine from February to July 1888. By the time that the serial had run its course, however, two book editions of The Reverberator had already appeared: on 5 June a first edition of 500 copies issued in two volumes in Great Britain, followed on 14 June by a second edition of 3,000 copies issued in one volume in the United States – both were published by Macmillan and Company. Given the close proximity of dates between the publication of these three versions of the novel, and the probability of their equally close printing dates, there is no single text of The Reverberator which holds an unques-tioned chronological primacy. The general principle of CFHJ is to select the first book edition as the copy text for this current edition, but as David J. Supino has observed, ‘[t]he printing sequence of the first edition and the second edition (American impression) is not clear, that is, whether the first edition was in fact the first book printing of this title’.

James's correspondence with Frederick Macmillan reveals that he received at least two payments covering separate instalments of the serial-ized text (recorded on 12 January and 16 April). This raises the possibility that James may still have been writing the novel during the process of serial publication, a practice common amongst earlier nineteenth-century novel-ists and one which he adopted for the much longer magazine serialization of The Tragic Muse in the latter months of 1888. At the latest, a complete version of the proofs for Macmillans's Magazine must have been in exis-tence by 16 April, when Frederick Macmillan offered terms for the novel's first volume publication and invited James to make corrections to the text before a second type-setting.

THE next morning he found himself sitting on one of the red satin sofas beside Mr. Dosson, in this gentleman's private room at the Hôtel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their father in the old quarters; they expected to spend the winter in Paris but they had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when you lived that way it was grand but lonely—you didn't meet people on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. Flack, at the cafés, he felt too much like a non-consumer. But he was patient and ruminant; Gaston Probert grew to like him and tried to invent amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and the Bank of France, and put him in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses (it is perhaps not superfluous to say that this was a perfectly straight proceeding on the young man's part), which Mr. Dosson, little as he resembled a sporting character, found it a welcome pastime on fine afternoons to drive, with a highly scientific hand, from a smart Américaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at the banker’s, where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his daughters—the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de Villiers. This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies clustered and their activity revolved; it gave a large scope to their faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brécourt Francie's lover had written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter.

GASTON PROBERT made his plan, imparting it to no one but his friend Waterlow, whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These confidences cost him something, for the clever young painter found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of showing it. Probert was too much in love, however, to be discountenanced by sarcasm. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow scoffed at him for a purpose—had a theory that that kind of treatment would be salutary. The French taste was in Waterlow's “manner,” but it had not yet coloured his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and pastors. He was Gallic to the tip of his finest brush, but the humour of his early American education could not fail to obtrude itself in discussion with a friend in whose life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was a crude way (and he knew it) of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the phrase is, improved upon the usages of France. That did injustice (and this the artist also knew), to the delicate nature of the bond which united the different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, and in regard to Mesdames de Brécourt, de Cliché and de Douves what Gaston was most afraid of was seeming to them not to love them. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming parts, held that the best way had not been taken to make a man of him, and the spirit in which the painter sometimes endeavoured to repair this mishap was altogether benevolent, though the form was frequently rough. Waterlow combined in an odd manner many of the forms of the Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn, Long Island, where his first seeds had been implanted.

Headnote

Composed February 1730; published posthumously, 1801; copy text 1801 (see Textual Account).

The award of the freedom of the city ofDublin and a gold box was a recognition of Swift's status as patriot and as a defender of the interests of Ireland in general, and the Dublin manufacturing classes in particular. It is also more implicitly connected to the heightened political animation of Dublin in 1729, particularly the increased conflict originating from the rise of a patriotic lobby (see above, Introduction, pp. lxxxvii–xciv).

On 16 January 1730, the corporation of Dublin voted to give Swift his freedom in a gold box, but on 13 February following, when the lord mayor and sheriffs were summoned to attend the privy council to answer questions concerning riots which had occurred in the city, they were harangued over this decision by Joshua, Viscount Allen. According to Marmaduke Coghill, Allen ‘wondered how they should complain of poverty, when they were so lavish as to give a gold box to a man who neither feared God nor honoured the king, who had wrote a libel on the king, queen and the government’ (Coghill to Edward Southwell, 21 Feb. 1729[/30] (Coghill Letters, pp. 91–2)). Allen's criticism brought forth this ‘Advertisement’ from Swift, though there is no evidence that it was ever published or otherwise distributed in Swift's lifetime, or that Swift intended it to be.

ADVERTISEMENT BY DR. SWIFT. IN HIS DEFENCE AGAINST JOSHUA, LORD ALLEN, FEB. 18, 1729.

“WHEREAS Dr. Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick's Dublin, hath been credibly informed, that on Friday the 13th of this instant February, a certain person did, in a publick place, and in the hearing of a great number, apply himself to the right honourable the lord mayor of this city, and some of his brethren, in the following reproachful manner: ‘My lord, you and your city can squander away the publick money, in giving a gold box to a fellow who has libelled the government!’ or words to that effect. Now, if the said words, or words to the like effect, were intended against him the said dean, and as a reflection on the right hon.

Headnote

Composed spring 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text SwJ 436 (see Textual Account).

One of four pieces (along with the Answers to Unknown Persons and Unknown Hands, and the Letter on M’culla) written in the spring of 1729 concerning Irish economic and agricultural problems, and not published in Swift's lifetime, the Letter to the Archbishop can be dated reasonably accurately, being a response to an appeal from a spokesman for the Irish weavers, asking Swift to ‘publish a recommendation that the Irish people should wear cloth made in their own country’ made in the Dublin Intelligence, 29April 1729. The intended recipient of Swift's piece, Archbishop William King, died on 8 May. This suggests a composition around the end of April or early May. King, like Swift, was the recipient of petitions and memorials from various associations of Dublin tradesmen.

Although resentment at the 1699 English Woollen Act was ongoing, and Swift's arguments about the unfairness and deleterious consequences of the Act had been elaborated in earlier writings from the Proposal for Irish Manufacture (1720) onwards, the economic difficulties of the late 1720s prompted several authors to discuss ways in which restrictions on Irish woollen exports might be ameliorated or modified, and make his argument particularly relevant. Smuggling of Irish woollen yarn to the continent, which benefited wool producers in Munster, was circumventing part of the restrictions of the Act. However, for the Dublin weavers with whom Swift was concerned, this was of no advantage, because their concern was to export manufactured cloth. Shortly afterwards, in 1731, the British administration sought a settlement by which the Irish Parliament would suppress the smuggling trade, in return for concessions in the English market (F. G. James, Ireland in the Empire, 1688–1770, p. 157; D. W. Hayton, ‘Accounts of Debates in the House of Commons, March–April 1731, Supplementary to the Diary of the First Earl of Egmont’, Electronic British Library Journal (2013)). This was unsuccessful.

Thursday November 17th 1887.

Last winter, in Florence, I was struck with the queer incident of Miss McC.'s writing to the New York World that inconceivable letter about the Venetian society whose hospitality she had just been enjoying – & the strange typicality of the whole thing. She acted in perfect good faith & was amazed, & felt injured & persecuted, when an outcry & an indignation were the result. That she should have acted in good faith seemed to me to throw much light upon that mania for publicity which is one of the most striking signs of our time. She was perfectly irreflective & irresponsible, & it seemed to her pleasant & natural & “chatty” to describe, in a horribly vulgar newspaper, the people she had been living with & their personal domestic arrangements & secrets. It was a striking incident & it seemed to me exactly the theme for a short story. One sketches one's age but imperfectly if one doesn't touch on that particular matter: the invasion, the impudence & shamelessness, of the newspaper & the interviewer, the devouring publicity of life, the extinction of all sense between public & private. It is the highest expression of the note of “familiarity”[,] the sinking of manners, in so many ways, which the democratization of the world brings with it. I was prompted to make use of the incident in question, which struck me [as] a very illustrative piece of contemporary life – the opposition of the scribbling, publishing, indiscreet, newspaperized American girl & the rigid, old-fashioned, conservative, still shockable & much shocked little society she recklessly plays the trick upon. The drama is in the consequences for her – & it is of course interesting in proportion as the consequences are great.

WHEN Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles Waterlow's studio she found Mme. de Cliché before the great canvas. She was pleased by every sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming all that way (she lived over by the Invalides) to look at the portrait once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of their making her acquaintance and they went into considerations about it which had not occurred to the original and her companions—frequently (as we know) as these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the merit of the work and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but it didn't make her look like a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the character in which it represented her but he didn't think it well painted. “Regardez-moi ça, et ça, et ça, je vous demande!” he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas, toward spots that appeared to him eccentric, with his glove, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The novelty of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a mystification to Mr. Probert.

Francie remembered now (she had forgotten it) that Margaret de Cliché had told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliché smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were—the papa and the grande sœur—the girl replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme.

This letter from ‘Andrew Trueman’ and ‘Patrick Layfield’, sent to Swift in April or May 1729, then printed in the Dublin Weekly Journal by its pseudonymous author or authors, is the origin of Swift's An Answer to Several Letters from Unknown Persons (above, pp. 108–18); the correspondents appear to be differently named versions of ‘Andrew Dealer’ and ‘Patrick Pennyless’, whose previous writings to Swift, which have not survived, inspired the writing of Intelligencer 19.

Sir,

The following is from a Country Farmer as you may observe by its plainness; its View seems intended as a Warning to remove the Cause of the Things complained of, which is hardly wished for by all true Lovers of their Country. Your inserting it in your Paper will be grateful to several, and in particular to

A Letter from some Farmers in the Country to a Gentleman in Dublin, shewing their Reasons for removing to the British Plantations in America, with other remarks & c.

SIR,

We receiv’d your Letter, wherein you desired to know the Cause why so many are grown fond of transporting themselves to America:2 in Obedience to your Commands we made Enquiry, and here send you as many of the Reasons as we could discover in the Country where we live, and hope you will pardon our Freedom, in expressing ourselves in the plain Terms and Language of the people.

About fifteen Years ago, many of our Friends and Acquaintance went with their Families to Pensilvania, from whom we have received many inviting Letters, which gave a fair Description of that Country, and much the same with a Book Entituled, An Account of the British Empire in America. Printed at London in the Year, 1708.3 These Letters fraught with Invitations and Encomiums on that happy Settlement, assure us of the abundance of all Necessaries, and Conveniences of Life, and that without the Dread of the Racking Landlord, and Griping Tythmaster. The Tenures of land are to them and their Posterity for ever; so that there are no vexatious Covenants in Leases, No: mina penas, Heriots, Duties, or such base Impositions.

Headnote

Composed September 1726; published posthumously, 1765; copy text SwJ 479 (see Textual Account).

This fragment is dated September 1726, and was written in the aftermath of the Drapier's Letters. The giving of badges to licensed beggars was not uncommon in contemporary Ireland, and this was Swift's first attempt at a subject which was discussed in Sir William Fownes's Methods Proposed for Regulating the Poor, in 1725. It joined considerable contemporary writing concerned with poverty and vagrancy, particularly with regard to the distress in the countryside and how such problems moved into Dublin (see Introduction, above, pp. xxx, lxxii). The practice of badging resident beggars was already borrowed from England, where the Poor Law intended to admit the aged and infirm, but not sturdy beggars. The Irish never enacted this, but seemed to adopt the idea of returning beggars to their own parish (a process already operative in the north of Ireland and some Dublin parishes). Swift himself was seeking to interest Archbishop King in his proposal, both as a friend and because of King's interest in poverty: King's papers in Marsh's Library (Z.3.11) contain a number of writings relating to the Dublin workhouse and to the problem of poverty more generally.

As well as its relation to the context of Swift's other pamphlets on the social effects of Irish economic problems from 1728 (most famously AModest Proposal), Swift would return to the abiding question of controlling vagrancy in 1737, in hismore extensive Proposal for Giving Badges to the Beggars (see below, pp. 305–19). Upon Giving Badges was first published posthumously in 1765, though the present copy text – the manuscript from the Forster Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum – has not been published before.

UPON GIVING BADGES TO THE POOR

The continuall Concourse of Beggars from all Parts of the Kingdom to this City having made it impossible for the severall Parishes to maintain their own Poor, according to the antient Laws of the Land. Severall Lord Mayors did apply themselves to the Lord Archbp of Dublin, that His Grace would direct his Clergy and the Churchwardens in the sd City, to appoint Badges of Brass, Copper or Pewter to be worn by the Poor of the severall Parishes.

“I GUESS my daughter's in here,” the old man said, leading the way into the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel (he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel), and had gone up to him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait upon the young man: he had as a matter of course got up and made his way across the court, to announce to the personage in question that she had a visitor. He looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentle-man's good offices as he would have accepted those of a waiter, murmur-ing no protest for the sake of making it appear that he had come to see him as well. An observer of these two persons would have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it natural that any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should find her for him. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George Flack stepped in after him.

The reading-room of the Hôtel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was not of great proportions, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist principally of a bare, highly-polished floor, on which it was easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his percep-tion, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and the New York Herald, which he had already read.

Headnote

Published 11 May 1728; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

In the opening number, Swift follows the introductory form for a journal, established by Steele, Addison and others, and familiar from Swift's years of political journalism in England. The paper offers a rationale of the journal's ambitions and approach, a description of its intended readership, and a general encouragement to contributors, while stressing its consistent promotion of virtue and appropriate moral considerations.

THE INTELLIGENCER.

It may be said, without offence to other Cities, ofmuch greater consequence in the World, that our Town of Dublin doth not want it's due proportion of Folly, and Vice, both Native and Imported; And as to those Imported, we have the advantage to receive them last, and consequently after our happy manner to improve, and refine upon them.

But, because there are many Effects of Folly and Vice among us, whereof some are general, others confined to smaller Numbers, and others again, perhaps to a few individuals; There is a Society lately established, who at great expence, have Erected an Office of Intelligence, from which they are to receive Weekly Information of all Important Events and Singularities, which this famous Metropolis can furnish. Strict injunctions are given to have the truest Information: In order to which, certain qualified Persons are employed to attend upon Duty in their several Posts; some at the Play-house, others in Churches, some at Balls, Assemblees, Coffee-houses, and meetings for Quadrille; some at the several Courts of Justice, both Spiritual and Temporal, some at the College, some upon my Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their publick Affairs; lastly, some to converse with favourite Chamber-maids, and to frequent those Ale-houses, and Brandy-Shops, where the Footmen of great Families meet in a Morning; only the Barracks and Parliament-house are excepted; because we have yet found no enfans perdus bold enough to venture their Persons at either. Out of these and some other Store-houses, we hope to gather Materials enough to Inform, or Divert, or Correct, or Vex the Town.

Headnote

Probably composed 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnote that forms part of this text was provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

Hints of the process behind this unfinished essay can be found in a manuscript in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (see Associated Materials I, pp. 324–7). Maxims is usually dated to 1729, not least because of its connection to Swift's other writings of the time (for speculations, see Ferguson, p. 148, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 575). Swift is listing a number of supposedly axiomatic statements concerning the economy, which are inapplicable in Ireland because of the problems of governance and constitution he had previously discussed in other Irish texts of this period. The contemporary idea of using the supposedly incontrovertible maxim as a way of making plain Ireland's anomalous plight can be seen in pamphlets such as Remarks on some Maxims, Peculiar to the Ancient, as well asModern Inhabitants of Ireland. With a Seasonable Hint to G Bn about the Woollen trade, Dublin, 1730, otherwise unconnected to Swift, and signed by ‘Hibernicus’, following the pseudonym adopted by James Arbuckle in his influential letters in the Dublin Journal.

MAXIMS CONTROLLED IN IRELAND.

The Truth of some Maxims in State and Government, examined with reference to Ireland.

There are certainMaxims of State, founded upon long observation and experience, drawn from the constant practice of the wisest nations, and from the very principles of government, nor ever controlled by any writer upon politics. Yet all these Maxims do necessarily presuppose a kingdom, or commonwealth, to have the same natural rights common to the rest of mankind who have entered into civil society. For, if we could conceive a nation where each of the inhabitants had but one eye, one leg, and one hand, it is plain that, before you could institute them into a republic, an allowance must be made for those material defects, wherein they differed from other mortals. Or, imagine a legislator forming a system for the government of Bedlam, and, proceeding upon the maxim that man is a sociable animal, should draw them out of their cells, and form them into corporations or general assemblies; the consequence might probably be, that they would fall foul on each other, or burn the house over their own heads.

Headnote

Composed after February 1733; published 1733; copy text 1733 (see Textual Account).

The death of the incumbent, Swift's friend Alderman Francis Stoyte, in February 1733, dates this brief statement on the desired prerequisites in the Dublin Recorder, and the choice of his successor.

Swift's successful recommendation of Eaton Stannard, a lawyer and ‘patriot’ MP was a deliberate intervention (for Swift's wider support of Stannard, see Introduction, pp. xxxiii, lxxxviii, xci, xcviii). The Recorder's position within Dublin politics was an important one: he was not an MP, and the position was partly honorary, but for Swift the Recorder would nonetheless play an important role in representing the city during a time of considerable political agitation, and the securing of a ‘patriot’ as Recorder was of symbolic and possible political significance, given coming Mayoral and Aldermanic elections (and the possibility of a parliamentary election too).

SOME CONSIDERATIONS HUMBLY OFFERED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD-MAYOR, THE COURT OF ALDERMEN, AND COMMON COUNCIL OF THE HONOURABLE CITY OF DUBLIN, IN THE CHOICE OF A RECORDER.

The Office of Recorder to this City, being vacant by the Death of a very worthy Gentleman, it is said that five or six Persons are solliciting to succeed him in the Employment. I am a Stranger to all their Persons, and to most of their Characters; which latter, I hope, will, at this Time, be canvassed with more Decency, than it sometimes happens upon the like Occasions.

Therefore, as I am wholly impartial, I can with more Freedom deliver my Thoughts, how the several Persons and Parties concerned ought to proceed, in electing a Recorder for this great and antient City.

And, first, as it is a very natural, so I can, by no Means, think it an unreasonable Opinion, that the Sons, or near Relations of Aldermen, and other deserving Citizens, should be duly regarded as proper Competitors for an Employment in the City's Disposal, provided they be equally qualified with other Candidates; and provided, that such Employments require no more than common Abilities, and common Honesty. But in the Choice of a Recorder, the Case is entirely different.

Headnote

Composed May–June 1730; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnotes that form part of this text were provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

This record of what Swift supposedly said when receiving the freedom of Dublin and a gold box on 27 May 1730 was presumably written soon after and was arguably not really intended for a wide audience; Ehrenpreis suggests it was only written for friends and allies (vol. III, p. 655).

After the corporation had voted to present Swift with his freedom, the dean proposed what Marmaduke Coghill called an ‘arrogant’ inscription, the terms of which gave the corporation pause, and resulted in the deferral of the presentation. The phrasing (which had probably been communicated to the corporation by Patrick Delany on Swift's behalf) would have cited the dean's ‘great zeal, unequalled abilities and distinguished munificence in asserting the rights, defending the liberties, and encouraging the manufactures of the kingdom’ and declared that he was ‘justly esteemed the most eminent patriot and greatest ornament of his native city and country’. When the mayor and aldermen eventually presented him with his gold box, there was no inscription, and, to make matters worse, a presentation had already been made to the archbishop ofDublin. Hence Swift's self-righteous outburst, and the recitation of his achievements as an Irish ‘patriot’ which would otherwise have been engraved for posterity (see Coghill to Edward Southwell, 21 Feb. 1729[/30] (Coghill Letters, pp. 91–2); Ehrenpreis, vol. III, pp. 650–5).

THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT WAS SAID BY THE DEAN OF ST. PATRICK's TO THE LORD MAYOR AND SOME OF THE ALDERMEN, WHEN HIS LORDSHIP CAME TO PRESENT THE SAID DEAN WITH HIS FREEDOM IN A GOLD-BOX.

When his Lordship had said a few words, and presented the instrument, the Dean gently put it back, and desired first to be heard. He said, He was much obliged to his Lordship and the city for the honour theywere going to do him, and which, as he was informed, they had long intended him: That it was true this honour was mingled with a little mortification, by the delay which attended it; but which, however, he did not impute to hisLordship or the city: And that themortification was the less, because he would willingly hope the delay was founded on a mistake; for which opinion he would tell his reason.

Headnote

Composed 1729; published October 1729; copy text 1729a (see Textual Account).

A Modest Proposal has become Swift's most famous pamphlet satire, but also reflects the general direction of Swift's Irish prose writings in the years 1728–9 in its depiction of the present state of Ireland, and the impossibility of its being improved, without some fundamental reappraisal of the Anglo-Irish constitutional relationship (albeit a premise in the pamphlet veiled in complex and contentious layers of irony). It also reflects particular issues which were heavily discussed in 1729, particularly the emigration ofUlster Presbyterians to North America, as well as the ongoing problem of vagrancy inDublin, and the countryside at large. Ironically perhaps, it appeared after the first good harvest in four years, which would in due course relieve some of the stress in the Irish economy. It may also be significant that it appeared at the beginning of the Parliamentary session of 1729–30, during whichMPs would be considering a range of initiatives designed for Irish economic recovery.

It was published in Dublin before the end of October 1729, and quickly reprinted (in slightly different versions) in London; the edition reprinted in London in A Libel on Dr Delany (1730) was the first to add the qualifier ‘in Ireland’ to its title. Henceforth the pamphlet was included in every significant edition of Swift's writings, from the Miscellanies of 1732 and the Faulkner Works of 1735 onwards. For further context and discussion, see Introduction, pp. lxxiv–lxxxvii.

A MODEST PROPOSAL &c

It is a melancholly Object to those, who walk through this great Town, or travel in the Country, when they see the Streets, the Roads, and Cabbin- Doors, crowded with Beggars of the female Sex, followed by three, four, or six Children, all in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms. These Mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelyhood, are forced to employ all their time in Stroling, to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants, who, as they grow up either turn Thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native Country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

Headnote

Composed April 1730; published April 1730; copy text 1730a (see Textual Account).

Swift's friendship with John Carteret, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1724 to 1730, dated back to Queen Anne's reign, when the young Carteret had been a Hanoverian Tory. It was renewed when Carteret came over to Ireland as viceroy in 1725, and Swift was able to secure from him some small items of patronage for his friends. But in general terms, Carteret pursued a political course in Ireland which involved the maintenance of local Whig interests in power; in 1730, he had ended his last parliamentary session in Ireland on a popular note.

Swift's ostensible and unnecessary defence of Carteret from the charge that he only gave advancement to Tories and Jacobites was also an opportunity to attack several enemies (Joshua Allen and Richard Tighe, appearing as Traulus and Pistorides, respectively, and unidentified in Irish editions of Swift during his lifetime) aligned to the Whig interest. Swift's pamphlet is more an attack on Whig paranoia (either real or affected) about Tory advancement under Carteret: the latter had been a Tory, and there had been a temporary recrudescence of the Tory interest in some boroughs after his arrival in 1725. By 1730, such charges were obviously unreasonable.

The pamphlet is internally dated by Swift's reference to the time of writing as 13 April 1730 (below, p. 214), and was published to coincide with the proroguing of Parliament on 15 April (see Woolley, Corr., vol. III, p. 310 fn. 9, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 658).

A VINDICATION OF HIS EX – -Y THE LORD C—, &c

In order to Treat this important Subject with the greatest Fairness and Impartiality, perhaps it may be convenient to give some Account of his E——, in whose Life and Character there are certain Particulars, which might give a very just Suspicion of some Truth in the Accusation he lyes under.

He is descended from two Noble, Antient, and most loyal Families, the Carterets and the Granvilles.