Headnote

Composed c. 8 June 1728; published; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

Published in June 1728, this introduces the general contrast between the calculating uses of discretion and prudence in the making of a career, and the worldly failure of the more ingenuous and principled, and was continued and exemplified in the two character studies in The Intelligencer, no. 7, with which it was later combined as ‘An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen’, when reprinted in the Pope/Swift Miscellanies of 1732.

The idea that discretion in public life is more of a veil for ambition and a form of self-interest appears frequently in Swift's writings, albeit in slightly different ways. The general premise that the discreetly ambitious are prepared to make great sacrifices (even of their self-respect) in order to advance is phrased in Thoughts on Various Subjects: ‘Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest Offices; so climbing is performed in the same Posture with Creeping’ (Davis, vol. I, p. 245). Gulliver is advised by the Emperor of Lilliput to ‘acquire, by my Patience and discreet Behaviour, the good Opinion of himself and his subjects’.Conversely, theKing of Brobdingnag remarks that, in Gulliver's milieu, it seems unlikely ‘that Men are ennobled on Account of their Virtue’, or ‘that Priests are advanced for their Piety or Learning’ (CWJS, vol. XVI, pp. 49, 189). And in ‘On Poetry: A Rhapsody’, the prospective poet, upon publication, is advised not to attempt to influence public opinion directly, but rather ‘Be silent as a Politician’ (Poems, vol. II, p. 644). Such examples could be multiplied, given Swift's suspicion of the ostensible means of advancement in public life.

THE INTELLIGENCER.

There is no Talent so useful towards rising in the World, or which puts Men more out of the reach of Fortune, than that Quality generally possessed by the Dullest sort of People, and is in common Speech, called Discretion, a species of lower Prudence, by the assistance of which, People of the meanest Intellectuals, without any other Qualification, pass through the World in great Tranquility, and with Universal good Treatment, neither giving nor taking Offence.

Headnote

Composed spring 1729; published posthumously, 1762; copy text SwJ 433 & 1765 (see Textual Account).

The Letter on M’culla was an unfinished response to James Maculla's attempt to reverse the scarcity of coins in his A New Scheme Proposed, to the People of Ireland (1728) and to his privately trying to gain Swift's approval for the project. The ongoing problem of Irish coinage was also tackled by Thomas Prior in 1730 (Observations on Coin in General. With some Proposals for Regulating the Value of Coin in Ireland). The general movement in economic thought at this time was towards an acceptance of paper currency (see James Kelly, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s’, ECI 6 (1991), 7–36; Patrick Kelly, ‘“Conclusions by no Means Calculated for the Circumstances and Condition of Ireland”: Swift, Berkeley and the Solution to Ireland's Economic Problems’, in Aileen Douglas et al. (eds.), Locating Swift: Essays from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998, pp. 47–59). Maculla was moving towards this principle, but his interim solution was the (unduly complicated) offering of promissory notes on copper; Swift (for whom the absence of an Irishmint was a prime concern) was anyway suspicious of the idea of paper currency and was unsympathetic towards the thinking behind such proposals. In the case ofMaculla, the impracticality of the scheme allowed him to dismiss such projects, and to indulge in some political arithmetic of his own.

Swift's objection to the workings of the scheme, and latent suspicion of the motives behind it meant that when Maculla's plan did not succeed, the need to finish and publish the pamphlet apparently passed, after its initial composition (usually placed in spring 1729). It was first published in 1762, by George Faulkner, and reprinted three years later by Deane Swift in a text with significant differences, complicated further by an extant partial manuscript.

ON M’CULLA's PROJECT

Sr,

You desire to know my opinion concerning Mr. M’cullas Project, of circulating notes stampd on copper, that shall pass for the value of halfpence and Pence.

The appearance of the Drapier's Letters in 1724 had transformed Swift's standing as a public figure in Ireland, and restored his reputation as a political commentator to the vertiginous heights previously reached by The Conduct of the Allies, written for Robert Harley's Tory administration in England in November 1711. Nothing he published after the Drapier's Letters had the same political impact. This judgement applies even to the Modest Proposal, which in retrospect was recognised as by some distance themost important of his writings on public affairs after 1725, but which received a relatively muted reception in Ireland when it first appeared. Indeed, in many of the works included in this volume (which excludes publications on purely ecclesiastical subjects), Swift was in effect re-treading old ground. His observations on the state of the Irish economy reiterated the pessimistic assessment which he had consistently articulated in the years following his exile to the deanery of St Patrick's in 1713, and which had been given a particularly sharp edge in the arguments of the Drapier. He saw Ireland's problems – the backwardness of agriculture, the decline in manufacture and trade, the scarcity of money, even the moral inadequacies of the people – as deriving ultimately from the kingdom's constitutional inferiority, and the way in which this had been, and was still being, exploited by ministers and Parliaments at Westminster to protect English interests and disadvantage the inhabitants of Ireland. But after the withdrawal of ‘Wood's Halfpence’ in 1725 the debate in Ireland over political economy moved on, and took a more constructive turn. A succession of poor harvests from 1727 to 1728 triggered subsistence crises, resulting in the impoverishment and near starvation of small farmers and labourers in the countryside, hosts of beggars on the streets of Dublin, and renewed (and overwhelmingly Protestant) emigration from Ulster to north America. In response, other commentators revisited the fundamental causes of Ireland's woes, and offered variations on Swift's themes. Pamphleteers and parliamentarians discussed ways in which Ireland might be ‘improved’, and in 1731 these would-be ‘improvers’ founded theDublin Society, a forum for the exchange of ideas and information, with the intention that it should become an engine of economic development.

Headnote

Probably composed November 1730; published posthumously, 1758; copy text 1758 (see Textual Account).

The context for this response is a revival in Ireland of the fear of popery at the end of the 1720s and early 1730s. Sir Robert Walpole's ministry had given permission for French recruiting officers to go to Ireland to recruit for the Irish brigade that was in French service. This necessitated their recruiting Catholics (who could not serve in British forces), which in turn led to reports that the French were actually recruiting under the name of the Pretender. The result was a scare based around common fears of Jacobite conspiracies, articulated in the paper originally titled ‘The CRAFTSMAN's First Letter of ADVICE’, published Saturday 7 November 1730 (see Appendix B, pp. 333–43).

Swift's response is notable for being written by the persona of the Modest Proposer, who begins by referring to his earlier tract, and proceeds to deliver a similar extreme argument in favour of the total depopulation of Ireland, as well as using anti-Jacobite paranoia to open up the other political and economic issues concerning Ireland with which Swift was preoccupied. The Answer was unfinished, and unpublished in Swift's lifetime, presumably because the presence of French recruiting officers had been rescinded by the government, and the issue resolved by the end of 1730 (see Ehrenpreis, vol. III, pp. 682–5; Ferguson, p. 180).

THE ANSWER TO THE CRAFTSMAN.

SIR,

I detest reading your Papers, because I am not of your Principles, and because I cannot endure to be convinced. Yet, I was prevailed on to peruse your Craftsman of December the 12th, wherein I discover you to be as great an Enemy of this Country, as you are of your own. You are pleased to reflect on a Project I proposed of making the Children of Irish Parents to be useful to the Publick instead of being burthensome; and you venture to assert, that your own Scheme is more charitable, of not permitting our Popish Natives to be listed in the Service of any foreign Prince.

Perhaps, Sir, you may not have heard of any Kingdom so unhappy as this, both in their Imports and Exports.

Headnote

Probably composed September 1726; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnote that forms part of this text was provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

A fragment printed alongside Upon Giving Badges to the Poor in 1765, and generally thought to be from the same period of composition (c. 1726), Considerations revisits the same issues of poverty and vagrancy, reflecting the deteriorating situation inDublin from 1726 onwards, whichmarked the beginning of continuing bad harvests for three years. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Dublin workhouse could not cope with the increased numbers of indigent coming to the city from the countryside, and there was therefore much discussion of amelioration.

Near the end of the fragment, Swift refers to a complaint against the workhouse under its former governors (see below, pp. 308–9). This might indicate (if the reference is specific, rather than general) that the draft was written after the restructuring of its governing body after an Act of Parliament in 1728, and not at the same time as Upon Giving Badges, as is usually assumed.

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT MAINTAINING THE POOR.

We have been amused, for at least thirty years past, with numberless schemes in writing and discourse, both in and out of parliament, for maintaining the poor, and setting them to work, especially in this city; most of which were idle, indigested, or visionary, and all of them ineffectual, as it hath plainly appeared by the consequences. Many of those projectors were so stupid, that they drew a parallel from Holland and England, to be settled in Ireland; that is to say, from two countries with full freedom and encouragement for trade, to a third where all kind of trade is cramped, and the most beneficial parts are entirely taken away. But the perpetual infelicity of false and foolish reasoning, as well as proceeding and acting upon it, seems to be fatal to this country.

For my own part, who have much conversed with those folks who call themselves Merchants, I do not remember to have met with a more ignorant and wrong thinking race of people in the very first rudiments of trade; which, however, was not so much owing to their want of capacity, as to the crazy constitution of this kingdom, where pedlars are better qualified to thrive than the wisest merchants.

Headnote

Probably composed early 1732; published February 1732; copy text 1732a (see Textual Account).

First published in Dublin in February 1732, and reprinted in March in London, this was a contribution (in ironic mode) to Swift's campaign against the two recent bills put forward by bishops in the Irish Parliament: the first ‘more effectually to enable the clergy … to reside upon their respective benefices’, and the second ‘for continuing and amending an act … for the real union and division of parishes’. The residence bill had been introduced into the Lords in December 1731 as ‘heads’, and, having been approved by both the Irish and British privy councils had been returned to the Lords on 10 Feb. 1732. The parishes bill had originated in the Irish privy council and had been brought into the Lords as a bill on 17 Feb. Both were passed by the upper house and sent down to the Commons on 21 Feb. and 24 Feb. respectively. But opponents (including Swift) were able to arouse opinion sufficiently for the Commons not to proceed. Taken together, the two bills sought to deal with the problem of non-residence among the parish clergy in an authoritarian manner by empowering bishops to force any incumbent of a benefice worth more than £100 p.a. to build a manse house; and also to divide large parishes without the incumbents’ consent. Swift pursued the subject without irony in the contemporaneous On the Bill for the Clergy's Residing on Their Livings, and Considerations upon Two Bills (Davis, vol. XII, pp. 179–202). He was acutely aware of the financial difficulties of the lower clergy, caused by the poverty of many livings, the impropriation by laymen of glebe land and either the impropriation of tithes or the resistance of tithe-payers (see above, Introduction, pp. lxiv–lxviii). He was also suspicious of the arbitrary power which the bills would have given the bishops, especially with regard to the potential division of parishes which he feared would multiply opportunities for patronage and result in the creation of a horde of ‘beggarly clergymen’ dependent on their episcopal superior. (See Landa, pp. 111–23; D. W. Hayton, ‘Parliament and the Established Church: Reform and Reaction’, in D.W. Hayton, James Kelly and John Bergin (eds.), The Eighteenth-century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 91–2.)

Headnote

Published c. 3–7 Dec.; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

Like An Answer to Several Letters from Unknown Persons (see below, pp. 94– 103), this paper is constructed as a response to two correspondents with Swift on Irish economic affairs, the pseudonymous ‘Andrew Dealer and Patrick Pennyless’ of the title, who had written to the Intelligencer (their letter has not survived; see Ferguson, p. 161).

Their letter and Swift's response arise from the continuing economic crisis in Ireland, following three bad harvests beginning in 1726. The effects of these were particularly felt in Ulster, hence Swift's pseudonym, ‘A. North’, a landowner and MP from County Down who explains the reasons for Ireland's financial woes, reiterating ideas Swift had previously put forward in A Short View and An Answer to The Memorial. Particular reference is made to the lack of a mint in Ireland, a point to which Swift would return in discussing the weakness of the currency.

The paper stimulated one of the earliest responses to Swift's work from America, To The Author of those Intelligencers Printed at Dublin, an anonymous pamphlet published in New York in 1733 (see below, Appendix D, pp. 349– 65).

THE INTELLIGENCER, &c

Having on the 12th of October last, receiv’d a LETTER Sign’d Andrew Dealer, and Patrick Pennyless; I believe the following PAPER, just come to my Hands, will be a sufficient Answer to it.

Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves.

Virg.

SIR,

I am a Country Gentleman, and a Member of Parliament, with an Estate of about 1400 l. a Year, which as a Northern Landlord, I receive from above two Hundred Tenants, and my Lands having been Let, near twenty Years ago, the Rents, till very lately, were esteemed to be not above half Value; yet by the intolerable Scarcity of Silver, I lye under the greatest Difficulties in receiving them, as well as in paying my Labourers, or buying any thing necessary for my Family from Tradesmen, who are not able to be long out of their Money. But the sufferings of me, and those of my Rank, are Trifles in Comparison, of what the meaner sort undergo; such as the Buyers and Sellers, at Fairs, and Markets; The Shop-keepers in every Town, the Farmers in general.

Headnote

Composed 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnotes that form part of this text were provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

The unfinished Answer to Several Letters Sent Me from Unknown Hands is one of the four pieces from 1729 on Irish economic questions not published in Swift's lifetime. It is notionally addressed to correspondents who had sent Swift their schemes and projections, but who have never been identified.

Although unpublished, the rhetoric of the paper moves beyond its original recipients, and reads as though intended for an audience of members of Parliament, in its listing of projects to improve Ireland: these include the construction of roads, themanaging of bogland, reforestation, the spread of tillage, and the grant of an Irishmint.Of these, two, the improvement of bogland and the extension of tillage, were incorporated in the so-called ‘Navigation Bill’ of 1729–30 (see D. W. Hayton, ‘Patriots and Legislators: Irishmen and their Parliaments, c. 1689 – c. 1740’, in Julian Hoppit (ed.), Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1860, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, p. 116). One proposal noted by Swift – the abolition of the Irish language – did not form part of the public discussion.

AN ANSWER TO SEVERAL LETTERS SENT ME FROM UNKNOWN HANDS. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR M DCC XXIX.

I am very well pleased with the good opinion you express of me, and wish it were any way in my power to answer your expectations, for the service of my country. I have carefully read your several schemes and proposals, which you think should be offered to the parliament. In answer, I will assure you, that, in another place, I have known very good proposals rejected with contempt by public assemblies, merely because they were offered from without doors; and yours perhaps might have the same fate, especially if handed into the public by me, who am not acquainted with three members, nor have the least interest with one. My printers have been twice prosecuted, to my great expence, on account of discourses I writ for the public service, without the least reflection on parties or persons; and the success I had in those of the Drapier was not owing to my abilities, but to a lucky juncture, when the fuel was ready for the first hand that would be at the pains of kindling it.

Headnote

Composed c. November 1733; published posthumously, 1789; copy text 1789 (see Textual Account).

Observations Occasioned by Reading the Case of the Woollen Manufacturers is a response to a piece published in November 1733 (see Appendix C, pp. 344– 9), in which seven manufacturers (i.e. merchants) are named and denounced for importing foreign cloth. Swift had always been ambivalent towards the woollen manufacturers: he had written in their support, but had also criticised some of their practices and products, such as the forcing onto sellers of inferior materials at inflated prices, and drawn attention to what he regarded as their economic short-sightedness, particularly with respect to quality and pricing, which he predicted would ensure the use of foreign imports.

Swift's condemnation of the merchants was presumably written shortly after the publication of the Case, though not printed until John Nichols's gathering of fugitive Swift pieces in 1789.

OBSERVATIONS OCCASIONED BY READING A PAPER, ENTITLED, THE CASE OF THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURERS OF DUBLIN, &c.

The paper called The Case of the Woollen Manufacturers, &c. is very well drawn up. The reasonings of the author are just, the facts true, and the consequences natural. But his censure of those seven vile citizens, who import such a quantity of silk stuffs, and woollen cloth from England, is an hundred times gentler than enemies to their country deserve; because I think no punishment in this world can be great enough for them, without immediate repentance and amendment. But, after all, the writer of that paper hath very lightly touched one point of the greatest importance, and very poorly answered the main objection, that the clothiers are defective both in the quality and quantity of their goods.

For my own part, when I consider the several societies of handicraftsmen in all kinds, as well as shopkeepers, in this city, after eighteen years experience of their dealings, I am at a loss to know in which of these societies the most or least honesty is to be found. For instance, when any trade comes first into my head, upon examination I determine it exceeds all others in fraud. But after I have considered them all round, as far as my knowledge or experience reacheth, I am at a loss to determine, and to save trouble I put them all upon a par.

Headnote

Published c. 22–5 June; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

A continuation of the discussion of the meanings of so-called ‘discretion’ in The Intelligencer, no. 5, this paper offers the parabolic cases of the self-serving Corusodes, and his inevitable advancement, with the failures of Eugenio, a talented but uncalculating student who becomes trapped in the life of genteel poverty of a provincial clergyman. Although the paper is meant to represent the sombre universal theme of the triumph of calculation and the insincere, Swift's story has more immediate relevance: the depiction of the snivelling and time-serving can be seen as Low Church characteristics. Equally, the talented and scholarly (but over-looked) clergyman would have had strong political resonance in the ecclesiastical preferment of Whig clergymen after 1714 and the corresponding reduced circumstances of High Churchmen like Swift and his friend Francis Atterbury.

THE INTELLIGENCER.

CORUSODES an Oxford Student, and a Farmer's Son, was never absent from Prayers, or Lecture, nor once out of his College after Tom had tolld. He spent every Day ten hours in his Closet, in Reading his Courses, Dozing, clipping Papers, or darning his Stockings, which last he performed to Admiration.He could be soberly Drunk at the expence of others, with College Ale, and at those Seasons was always most Devout. He wore the same Gown five Years, without dagling or tearing. He never once looked into a Play-book or a Poem. He read Virgil and Ramus in the same Cadence, but with a very different Taste.He never understood a Jest, or had the least Conception ofWit.

For one saying he stands in Renown to this Day. Being with some other Students over a Pot of Ale; one of the Company said so many pleasant things, that the rest were much diverted, only Corusodes was silent and unmoved. When they parted, he called this merry Companion aside, and said; Sir, I perceived by your often speaking, and our Friends laughing, that you spoke many jests, and you could not but observe my Silence. But Sir this is my humour, I never make a jest myself, nor ever laugh at another Man’s.

Swift's Irish prose writings after the Drapier's Letters were often works of controversy or addressed to a particular debate (some more successfully so than others), and thus frequently written with an immediate purpose. As such, their dissemination in Dublin was often relatively straightforward, using the same printers, and often not requiring a particularly high standard of printing: the work needed to be published, not refined and endlessly revised. Unpublished works, polemics that were not finished or whose time quickly passed, were collected posthumously by later editors. London printings and reprintings complicated matters somewhat, but, nevertheless, none of the works included in this volume offer the sort of intractable textual problems that make the choice of a copy text in itself an act of conjecture as much as judgment.

The transmission of Swift's prose pamphlets in this period can be thought about with reference to his own view of his writing at this time. Stephen Karian has suggested that Swift's ‘late period’ begins around September 1727 (the end of his final visit to England). It was at this time, Karian argues, that he ‘was no longer seeking patronage that might alter his residence and ecclesiastical position in Ireland. That acceptance of his professional status seems to have liberated him toward being quite politically outspoken as a writer, even more outspoken than earlier.’ Although Karian's argument is applied to Swift's increased poetic output from this point, the mixture of apparent resignation (as his writings will avail him little personally) and liberation (as he has little to fear from the consequences) can be applied to his polemical prose in these years, and the manner of its arrival into the world.

Swiftwas apparently very ambivalent about the value of his topical writings from this time onwards, most explicitly in telling Pope (in 1731) that ‘I write Pamphlets and follysmeerly for amusement, and when they are finished, or I grow weary in the middle, I cast them into the fire, partly out of dislike, and chiefly because I know they will signify nothing.’ A year later he described how ‘As to Ireland … I remember to have published nothing but what is called the Drapier's letters, and some few other trifles relating to the affairs of this miserable and ruined Kingdom.’