343. Swift, View of the exporting their native commodities and manufactures wherever they pleased, except to countries at war with their own prince or state yet this privilege, by the superiority of mere power, is refused us in the most momentous parts of commerce; besides an act of navigation, to which we never consented, pinned down upon us, and rigorously executed; and a thousand other unexampled circumstances, as grievous as they are invidious to mention. To go on to the rest. It is too well known that we are forced to obey some laws we never consented to. . . . Thus we are in the condition of patients who have physic sent them by doctors at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of their disease; and thus we are forced to pay five hundred per cent to decide our properties in all which we have likewise the honor to be distinguished from the whole race of mankind.... We are so far from having a king to reside among us, that even the viceroy is generally absent four fifths of his time. No strangers from other countries make this a part of their travels, where they can expect to see nothing but scenes of misery and desolation. Those who have the misfortune to be born here, have the least title to any considerable employment; to which they are seldom preferred, but upon a political consideration. One third part of the rents of Ireland is spent in England; which, with the profit of employments, pensions, appeals, journeys of pleasure or health, education at the inns of court and both universities, remittances at pleasure, the pay of all superior offices in the army, and other incidents, will amount to a full half of the income of the whole kingdom,-all clear profit to England. We are denied the liberty of coining gold, silver, or even copper. In the Isle of Man they coin their own silver; every petty prince, vassal to the emperor, can coin what money he pleases. And in this, as in most of the articles already mentioned, we are an exception to all other states or monarchies that were ever known in the world. . . . Another class of burdens is referred to in the next extract. Miserable Ireland (1727) The first and greatest shock our trade received was from 344. Swift, an act passed in the reign of King William, in the parliament The Present of England, prohibiting the exportation of wool manufactured State of in Ireland; an act (as the event plainly shews) fuller of greediness than good policy; an act as beneficial to France and Spain as it has been destructive to England and Ireland. At the passing of this fatal act the condition of our trade was glorious and flourishing, though no way interfering with the English. . . . Coarse druggets, bays, and shalloons, worsted damasks, strong draught works, slight half works, and gaudy stuffs were the only product of our looms: these were partly consumed by the meanest of our people, and partly sent to the northern nations, from which we had in exchange timber, iron, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, and hard dollars. . . This money was returned into England for fine cloths, silks, etc., for our own wear, for rents, for coals, for hardware, and all other English manufactures, and, in a great measure, supplied the London merchants with foreign silver for exportation. The repeated clamors of the English weavers produced this act, so destructive to themselves and us. They looked with envious eyes upon our prosperity, and complained of being undersold by us in those commodities which they themselves did not deal in. At their instances the act was passed, and we lost our profitable northern trade. .. The only manufactured wares we are allowed to export are Linen alone linen cloth and linen yarn, which are marketable only in Eng- allowed to be exported anyland; the rest of our commodities are wool, restrained to where England, and raw hides, skins, tallow, beef, and butter. Now these are things for which the northern nations have no occasion; we are therefore obliged, instead of carrying woolen goods to their markets, and bringing home money, to purchase their commodities. In France, Spain, and Portugal our wares are more valuable, though it must be owned our fraudulent trade in wool is the best branch of our commerce; from hence we get wines, brandy, and fruit very cheap, and in great perfection; so that though England has constrained us to be poor, they have given us leave to be merry. To England we are allowed to send nothing but linen cloth, yarn, raw hides, skins, tallow, and wool. From thence we have coals, for which we always pay ready money, India goods, English woolen and silks, tobacco, hardware, earthenware, salt, and several other commodities. Our exportations to England are very much overbalanced by our importations; so that the course of exchange is generally too high, and people choose rather to make their remittances to England in specie than by a bill, and our nation is perpetually drained of its little running cash. Absenteeism Another cause of the decay of trade, scarcity of money, and of the gentry swelling of exchange is the unnatural affectation of our gentry to reside in and about London. Their rents are remitted to them, and spent there. The countryman lacks employment from them; the country shopkeeper lacks their custom. For this reason he can't pay his Dublin correspondent readily, nor take off a great quantity of his wares. Therefore the Dublin merchant can't employ the artisan, nor keep up his credit in foreign markets. . . . Rack rents Sheep farms Another great calamity is the exorbitant raising of the rents of lands. Upon the determination of all leases made before the year 1690, a gentleman thinks he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has only doubled his rent roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack rent, leases granted but for a small term of years, tenants tied down to hard conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to the best advantage, by the certainty they have of the rent being raised, on the expiration of their lease, proportionately to the improvements they shall make. Thus is honest industry restrained; the farmer is a slave to his landlord; 't is well if he can cover his family with a coarse homespun frieze. The artisan has little dealing with him; yet he is obliged to take his provisions from him at an extravagant price, otherwise the farmer cannot pay his rent. The proprietors of lands keep great part of them in their own hands for sheep pasture; and there are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog kennel and an acre of ground for a potato plantation, on condition of being as very slaves as any in America. What can be more deplorable than to behold wretches starving in the midst of plenty! We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find them employed; but then we don't consider they have nothing to do. Sir William Temple, in his excellent remarks on the United Provinces, inquires why Holland, which has the fewest and worst ports and commodities of any nation in Europe, should abound in trade, and Ireland, which has the most and best of both, should have none? This great man attributes this surprising accident to the natural aversion man has for labor; who will not be persuaded to toil and fatigue himself for the superfluities of life throughout the week, when he may provide himself with all necessary subsistence by the labor of a day or two. But, with due submission to Sir William's profound judgment, the want of trade with us is rather owing to the cruel restraints we lie under than to any disqualification whatsoever in our inhabitants. III. GEORGE I, GEORGE II, AND SIR ROBERT WALPOLE The characters of the first two kings of the house of Hanover, who reigned from 1714 to 1727 and from 1727 to 1760 respectively, are well, though by no means favorably, sketched by Lord Chesterfield, who knew them both and was long attached to the court of George II. With all their interests restricted to their German dominions, and accepted as rulers in England only as a means of excluding the Catholic Stuarts, they exercised but little real power in the government. Their low personal character, moreover, exerted a bad influence on society. George the First was an honest, dull, German gentleman, as unfit as unwilling to act the part of a king, which is to shine and to oppress. Lazy and inactive, even in his pleasures, 345. A contemporary estimate of which were therefore lowly sensual, he was coolly intrepid and indolently benevolent. He was diffident of his own parts, which the first two made him speak little in public, and prefer in his social, which Georges George I George II were his favourite, hours the company of wags and buffoons. Even his mistress, the duchess of Kendal, with whom he passed most of his time, and who had all influence over him, was very little above an idiot. Importunity alone could make him act, and then only to get rid of it. His views and affections were singly confined to the narrow compass of his electorate; England was too big for him. If he had nothing great as a king, he had nothing bad as a man; and if he does not adorn, at least he will not stain, the annals of this country. In private life he would have been loved and esteemed as a good citizen, a good friend, and a good neighbor. Happy were it for Europe, happy for the world, if there were not greater kings in it! ... He had not better parts than his father, but much stronger animal spirits, which made him produce and communicate himself more. Everything in his composition was little ; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one. He loved to act the king, but mistook the part; and the royal dignity shrunk into the electoral pride. He was educated upon that scale, and never enlarged its dimensions with his dominions. As elector of Hanover he thought himself great; as king of Great Britain only rich. Avarice, the meanest of all passions, was his ruling one; and I never knew him deviate into any generous action. . . . In council he was excessively timorous, and thought by many to be so in person; but of this I can say nothing on my own knowledge. In his dress and in his conversation he affected the hero so much, that from thence only many called his courage in question, though, by the way, that is no certain rule to judge by, since the bravest men with weak understandings constantly fall into that error. Little things, as he has often told me himself, affected him more than great ones; and this was so true that I have often |