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"Follow Me"-'mid many pleasures
How I sought-but sought in vain-
To forget that Voice so tender,

Yet those words would come again,
Till my heart grew sad and restless,
And all earthly joys seemed pain!

"Follow Me"-at last I answered:
Jesus dear, at last I'm Thine;
Now my soul is calm and peaceful,
Filled with happiness divine;
For I want no love but Jesus
Reigning in this heart of mine.

S. M. W.

GOOD THINGS WELL SAID

1. Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words or in good order.-Bacon.

2. A man's good breeding is his best security against other people's ill manners.-Chesterfield.

3. Poverty many can endure with dignity. Success how few can carry off even with decency and without baring their innermost infirmities before the public gaze.Cunningham Graham.

4. To the heart nothing can speak save another heart.Diego de Estella.

5. There are few that are capable both of thought and of action. Thought expands but lames; action animates but narrows.-Goethe.

6.

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in your own.

-Adam Lindsay Gordon.

7. Things don't turn up in this world until somebody

turns them up.-Garfield.

THE IRISH MONTHLY

DECEMBER, 1915

IN

IRELAND ABLAZE IN 1724

By MICHAEL MACDONAGH.

N the years 1724 and 1725 Ireland, for the first time in its history, was politically united. The diverse and antagonistic elements hitherto at contention within its borders-Irish and English, Protestant and Catholic, tenants and landlords, masters and workers, Tory and Whig, Hanoverian and Jacobite-were unified by the common patriotic purpose which animated them all-that no influence on earth would induce the country, much less compel it, to make use of the new half-pennies and farthings which were then being minted in England for circulation in Ireland. It was said that the coins were utterly spurious. What was more galling to the national pride, it was said also that the coins were being foisted upon Ireland by an English ironmaster named Wood, with the connivance of the English Government, and without the authority of the Irish Parliament. One man's pen caused all this commotion. For these were the things the people were being told of the new coinage in a series of letters written by an unknown draper —or “drapier," as it was rendered in the spelling of the day from his shop in Francis-street, a mysterious dealer in cottons and linens who had a wonderful gift of persuasive, inspiring and caustic writing.

VOL. XLIII.-No. 510.

56

The letters, however, were written not in a shop in Francis-street by a tradesman, but—as it afterwards became known-by a clergyman of the Protestant Church in a house close to St. Patrick's Cathedral, not far from Francis-street. The writer was a man of the age of 57; a conspicuous figure in the streets of Dublin for his uncommon appearance; supposed to be eccentric and certainly reserved, for everyone was kept rather in awe and at a distance by the severe and moody expression of the swarthy countenance of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's.

Swift did not scruple audaciously to invent statements of fact, and also to use the most fantastical arguments. Yet so artfully invested are these excesses with an air of simple sincerity and truth by the magic literary skill of the author, that the letters derive from them much of their irresistible power. Some of the exaggerations are diverting to read in the twentieth century. For instance, though the copper coins were to be legal tender only up to 5d. Swift assumes that they would inevitably oust silver and gold from the currency, and that, in consequence, all commercial and shopping transactions, large and small, would have to be conducted by means of these farthings and half-pennies, which were as heavy as they were debased. He says:

"The common weight of these half-pence is between four and five to an ounce suppose five; then 3s. 4d. will weigh a pound, and consequently 20s. will weigh six pounds butter weight. Now there are many hundred farmers who pay £200 a year rent; therefore, when one of these farmers comes with his half year's rent, which is £100, it will be at least six hundred pounds weight, which is three horses' load. If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes and wine and spices for himself and family, or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must bring with him five or six horses well laden with sacks, as the farmers bring their corn, and when his lady comes in her coach to our shops it must be followed by a car loaded with Mr. Wood's money. And I hope we shall have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth. They say Squire Conolly (the Speaker) has £16,000 a year. Now, if he sends

for his rent to town, as it is likely he does, he must have 250 horses to bring up his half year's rent, and two or three great cellars in his house for storage. But what the bankers will do I cannot tell, for I am assured that some great bankers keep by them £40,000 in ready cash, to answer all payments, which sum, in Mr. Wood's money, would require 1,200 horses to carry it."

Rumour had it that Sir Robert Walpole, the British Prime Minister, had threatened to make the Irish "swallow his coin in fireballs." With the same taking assumption of gravity Swift amusingly proceeds to examine this proposal in order to prove its impracticability. He says:

"For to execute this operation, the whole stock of Mr. Wood's coin and metal must be melted down and moulded into hollow balls with wildfire, no bigger than a reasonable throat may be able to swallow. Now, the metal he has prepared, and already coined, will amount to at least fifty millions of half-pence, to be swallowed by a million and a half of people; so that, allowing two half-pence to each ball, there will be about seventeen balls of wildfire apiece to be swallowed by every person in the Kingdom; and to administer this dose there cannot be conveniently fewer than fifty thousand operators, allowing one operator to every thirty, which, considering the squeamishness of some stomachs and the peevishness of young children, is but reasonable. Now, under correction of better judgments, I think the trouble and charge of such an experiment would exceed the profit."

The writing of the "Drapier Letters" was not Swift's initial effort as a patriot. The first blow he struck for Irish nationality was a pamphlet in support of Irish manufacture, which was published anonymously in 1720. Its title page is as follows:

A proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture in Cloths and Furniture of Houses, etc.

Utterly Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England.

Dublin: Printed and sold by E. Waters in Essex Street, at the corner of Sycamore Alley, 1720.

The pamphlet consists of fifteen pages, 8vo. well printed in fine clear type, and added emphasis is lent the excellent advice it gives to the people of Ireland by the profuse and at times eccentric use of italics and capital letters. We find the famous exhortation "Burn everything that comes from England but the coals," which is popularly supposed to be Swift's, attributed to another source, but heartily supported in the pamphlet. Swift writes:-"I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant Observation of some Body's; that Ireland would never be happy 'till a Law were made for burning every Thing that came from England except their People and their Coals." He goes on to advise

the Irish Parliament to turn their attention to the state of the nation." For example," he writes:

"What if the House of Commons had thought fit to make a resolution, nemine contradicente, against wearing any cloth or stuff in their families, which were not of the growth and manufacture of this Kingdom? What if they had extended it so far as utterly to exclude all silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies; and declared that whoever acted otherwise should be deemed and reputed an enemy to the nation? 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 counties? 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 for themselves and their daughters?"

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Upon the whole and to crown all the rest," he adds, "let a firm resolution be taken by male and female never to appear with one single shred that comes from England, and let all the people say Amen." He should rejoice to see the use of a stay-lace from England be thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea tables. Then comes a fine passage in which he uses the fable in Ovid of Arachne and Pallas to point his moral:

"The goddess had heard of one Arachne, a young virgin, very famous for spinning and weaving. They both met upon a trial of skill; and Pallas, finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and envy, knocked her rival down, and turned her into a spider: enjoining her to spin and weave for ever out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass. I confess that from a boy I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never heartily love the goddess, on account of so cruel and unjust a sentence; which, however, is fully executed upon us by England, with farther additions of rigour and severity for the greatest part of our bowels and vitals is extracted without allowing us the liberty of spinring and weaving them."

The Government took alarm at the pamphlet and indicted the printer for seditious libel. Waters was tried before Chief Justice Whitshed and a jury of the city of Dublin. In his charge to the jury the judge laid his hand on his heart and declared it was plain that the intention of the writer was to bring in the Pretender. The jury, however, were not to be cajoled by this appeal to their loyalty to the Hanoverian succession to the Throne.

A verdict of not

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