d
have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
me.'

The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.

In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them

"Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"

but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'

The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
prosecution was dropped.

Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
the writ