The shifting combinations of party, from the settlement of the constitution at the Revolution to a later period, is an attractive study to any who wish to find the origin of abuses which have long vexed the political life of England. Besides, it is wholesome and instructive to be carried away from the modern difficulty to the broader issues which have gradually led to the present complication.

William III. was a Whig, and his successor a Tory, but except for short periods no Tory party was able in either reign to carry on the government upon Tory principles. William made no complete change of ministry during his reign, only modifying its composition according to what appeared the prevailing sentiment of the parliament or the nation. It was composed of both parties; the Whigs predominated till the close of the reign, when their opponents acquired ascendency. Anne’s first ministry was Tory, but a change was soon wrought by a favourite of the court who happened to be a Whig and who soon turned the scale. Some knowledge of the character of the monarch is indispensable to a clear understanding of the times. In 1702, Anne ascended the throne. The queen’s notions of government were those of her family—narrow and despotic. She would have been as arbitrary in her conduct as Elizabeth, but that her actions were restrained by the imbecility of her mind. The queen was the constant slave of favourites who, in their turn, were the tools of intriguing politicians. Events of the greatest importance were crowded into the short space of the twelve years which covered her reign, and the most distinguished intellects adorned the period.

It was because the queen was fascinated by the Duchess of Marlborough that her reign was adorned by the glories of Ramillies and Blenheim: it was because Mrs. Abigail Masham artfully supplanted her benefactress in royal favour, that a stop was put to the war which ravaged the Continent, while by a chambermaid’s intrigue Bolingbroke triumphed over his rival, the Earl of Oxford.

During the first part of Anne’s reign, Marlborough was paramount in the Houses of Parliament and his wife in the closet. The Tories came into power on the queen’s accession, with Marlborough and Godolphin as leaders. They substantially maintained the policy of King William in prosecuting the war with France, which resulted in making England illustrious in Europe.

Whig principles soon acquired a decided majority in the House, when an act of national importance took place, the effect of which thrilled the empire. The queen and the duchess quarrelled, and the intriguing waiting-maid stepped into the latter’s place. Besides the queen’s whims she had a superstitious reverence for the Church; and had been taught to regard the Whigs as Republicans and Dissenters, who wished to subvert the monarchy. Harley traded on this weakness through the instrumentality of Mrs. Masham. This lady was used by him to oust Marlborough and Godolphin, and she continued the tool of Harley and St. John, who now became the chiefs of the new ministry. A jealousy between these two ministers afterwards sprang up, which finally resulted in a quarrel and separation. St. John, created Viscount Bolingbroke, plotted with Mrs. Masham to procure the crown for the Pretender, but the cabal oozed out and alarmed the Tories. The last night of the queen’s life was spent in listening to an open quarrel between the waiting-maid and the minister. At two o’clock in the morning she went out of the room to die; she had strength, however, to defeat the schemers by consigning the staff of state to Lord Shrewsbury. “Take it,” she said, “for the good of my country.” They were the last, perhaps the most pathetic words of her life. When Bolingbroke was defeated, the Whigs came into power and continued in office till the reign of George III.

It was during the reign of William III. that Swift began his political career as a Whig. His patron, Sir William Temple, introduced him to the king, who was so impressed with his talents that he offered to make him a captain of dragoons. Had he accepted this offer, he might have become a second Cromwell. As this distinction was declined, the king promised to see to his future interest. On the death of Temple, Swift edited the works of his patron, dedicated them to the sovereign, and reminded him of his promise. Neither the dedication nor the memorial was noticed. Swift had to fall back on the post of chaplain and private secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He became a political writer on the side of the Whigs, and associated with Addison, Steele, and Halifax. From the party leaders he received scores of promises and in the end was neglected. The cup of preferment was twice dashed from his hand; on the first occasion when Lord Berkeley would have given him a bishopric, his name was vetoed by the Primate on the grounds of his youth, and on the second when he was named for a vacant canonry, but at the last moment the prize was given to another.

During Anne’s reign Swift paid frequent visits to England, and became closely connected with the leading Tories. In 1710 he broke with the Whigs and united with Harley and the Tory administration. The five last years of Anne’s government found him playing a prominent part in English politics as the leading political writer of the Tories. He was on terms of the closest intimacy with Oxford (Harley) and Bolingbroke, and attempted to heal the breach between the rival statesmen. He helped the Tories in a paper called the Examiner, upholding the policy of the ministers and supplying his party with the arguments they would have used if they had had the brains to think of them. This series of articles culminated in the “Conduct of the Allies,” a pamphlet which brought about the disgrace of Marlborough and made the peace popular. In it the author denounced the war as the plot of a ring of Whig stock-jobbers and monied men. These weekly papers in the Examiner produced a great effect upon the public mind and called forth a multitude of opponents. Swift gave the Press the wonderful position it holds now. He almost created the “leading article;” and though his contributions will not bear comparison with the light style of our own day, they suited his times. They were written in a plain, homely style, for Swift had a thorough contempt for abstract thought and abstract politics; indeed, his low estimate of men convinced him that they were about as good for flying as for thinking. Mr. Leslie Stephen aptly states that Swift’s pamphlets were rather “blows than words;” he had serious political effects to produce, and what he had to prove it was necessary to say in plain words, for honest Tory squires of the country party to understand and obey.

The Examiner, the Medley, the Tattler, and the pamphlets of that day bear no analogy to the modern newspaper; their influence did not penetrate to the lower classes of the community, who were still without education.

Swift is condemned by many who are not conversant with his character, his writings, or the times in which he lived. In detached views, no man was more liable to be misunderstood; his individual acts must be compared with his entire conduct, in order to give him his proper place in the gallery of historical characters. The charge of deserting his party is answered by Dr. Johnson, whose evidence is of greater value as he never professed to be his friend. “Swift, by early education, had been associated with the Whigs; but he deserted them when they deserted their principles, yet he never ran into the opposite extreme; for he continued throughout his life to retain the disposition which he assigned to the Church of England man, of thinking commonly with the Whigs of the State and with the Tories of the Church.”

“Swift,” say his opponents, “rails at the whole human race;” so he does, and so do we all, at particular times and seasons; when long experience has shown us the selfishness of some, the hollowness of others, and the base ingratitude of the world. Not having lifted his voice in protestation against the terrible penal laws inflicted on his Catholic brethren, and enacted before his door, is, perhaps, the heaviest indictment brought against his name, and the one which, on examination, will prove the most futile. He was the last man who, from his connection with a discarded Tory party, could have taken action with any effect; for if he had made the attempt, and if complaints had originated from it, they would have been interpreted into murmurs of rebellion. One revolt had been put down in Scotland, in which it was supposed that every Catholic in Ireland was implicated, and another which was hatching in the country, broke out in 1745; consequently, any interference of Swift on behalf of the Roman Catholics would have drawn upon him the total displeasure of the government and have caused him to be voted an enemy to his country, as was done in the case of Lucas, twenty years after. His words on another occasion show that he was not wanting in sympathy towards the native Irish. “The English should be ashamed of the reproaches they cast on their ignorance, dullness, and want of courage; defects arising only from the poverty and slavery they suffer from their inhuman neighbours, and the base, corrupt spirit of too many of the gentry. By such treatment as this the very Grecians are grown slavish, ignorant, and superstitious. I do assert that from several experiments I have made in travelling in both England and Ireland, I have found the poor cottagers in the latter kingdom, who could speak our language, to have a much better natural taste for good sense, humour, and raillery than ever I observed among people of the sort in England. But the million of oppressions the national Irish lie under, the tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their priests and the general misery of the whole nation, have been enough to damp the best spirits under the sun.”

When Swift’s friends were out of power, Oxford no longer at Court and Bolingbroke in exile, he returned to Ireland, and after visiting several parts of the country, and making himself acquainted with the exact condition of the people, he took up the cause of Ireland with a vigour rarely exhibited by any patriot. The last twenty-five years of his sane life were given to his country, during which time he devoted almost all his energy to Irish concerns. His stern sense of justice prompted him to lay bare the wrongs of his native land with the cool calculation of a banker examining accounts, or that of a surgeon cutting open a tumour. His letters, pamphlets, and sermons are full of allusions to the miseries and disabilities of the Irish. In writing to Pope, he disclaims the title of Patriot, and gives us exactly his motive. “What I do,” he says, “is owing to perfect rage and resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live.” It is said that he was a disappointed, mortified man. I allow he was. Swift was ill-used as well as his country. Was he therefore not to resent the injuries offered her because wrongs were heaped on himself, or, after remaining quiet under the disappointments of years, are we to suppose that at the end of that period his own private grievances ceased to be intolerable, and that the public provocations which became urgent had no effect upon him?

About 1720, a narrow, exclusive clique governed Ireland in avowed contempt of all phases of Irish opinion. The need of reform had occupied the attention only of an insignificant handful. None had yet succeeded in rousing a national spirit to resist the people’s wrongs, an over-insistence of which wrongs was looked upon as veiled Jacobitism. No doubt Swift’s first motive was opposition to Walpole and his party. He looked back with bitterness to the fall of his friends. He disliked the cant of the Whigs and their travesty of liberty; from that moment his real interest in Ireland began. Swift scorned Jacobitism, and had a righteous contempt for “divine right and absolute prerogative.” He justified the Revolution; was opposed to a Popish successor; had a mortal antipathy to a standing army in time of peace; desired that parliaments should be annual; disliked the monied interest in opposition to the territorial; feared the growth of the national debt; and dreaded further encroachments on the liberty of the subject. He believed the Whig government of Ireland to be founded on corruption. All these opinions went to swell the current of his indignation against Irish wrongs, and it was in consequence of them that he lashed the government with his scorpion pen.

The papers written by Swift during the years 1720 to 1734 are now little studied by the people or their representatives; nevertheless, if carefully examined, they will be found useful in throwing light upon the unsolved problem. They deal with everything connected with the country: with banks, currency, agriculture, fisheries, grazing, beggars, planting, bog-reclaiming and road-making; and all in a style peculiarly his own, a style seldom equalled and never surpassed. His pictures of the state of the country present curious parallels to what we find to-day. There are, of course, references to grievances which have long ceased to exist; such as the penal laws, and the restriction on trade, but there are many long-standing evils which are not much better now than they were in Swift’s day. The rack-renting, absentee landlords are more numerous in 1887 than they were in 1730, while the improvements effected by the tenants were as much a dead loss of capital in the time of Swift, as in the days of Gladstone.

The secret of Swift’s forcible utterances is that he infused himself into everything he wrote; and his writings, in consequence, exhibit, not merely his intellectual power, but also his moral nature, his principles, his prejudices, even his temper. Swift possessed the most masculine intellect of his age, and was the most earnest thinker of his times. He wrote like a man of the world, and a gentleman; scorning the conceits of rhetorical flourish, and never stooping to ad misericordiam appeals for sympathy.

Of all writers of the English language, his style most approximates to that of the old orators of Greece in force, rapidity, directness, dexterity, luminous statement, and honest homeliness. The reader is impelled with his vigour, as a soldier by the blast of a trumpet; while his feelings are captivated by his author’s manifest sincerity; his outburst of derisive scorn and withering invective, alternately heat and chill the blood. Perhaps his merit is most revealed in the profound sagacity of his political observations, infusing into his country that spirit which enabled her to demand those rights she at last established. Swift’s character rose in Ireland with his defence of it in 1724; for, by his conduct then, he acquired an esteem and influence which can never be forgotten. The question of consideration at that day was not whether Wood’s halfpence were good or bad:—the question was, whether an enterprising manufacturer of copper should prevail against Ireland. An insulting patent, obtained in the most insidious way, was issued by the British Cabinet without consulting the legitimate rulers of the country. Against it the grand juries protested, the corporations protested, the Irish parliament protested. All failed. At last there stood forth a private clergyman, whose party was proscribed and himself persecuted, and he carried the country at his back and forced the British minister to retire within his trenches. Ireland, trampled on by a British minister, by a British and Irish parliament; Ireland that had lost her trade, her judicature, her parliament; sunk with the weight of oppression, prevails under the direction of a solitary priest, who not only inspired but instructed his countrymen in a magnificent vindication of their liberty and the most noble repudiation of dependence ever taught a nation; telling them, “that by the law of God, of nature, of nations, and of their country they are and ought to be as free a people as their brethren in England.”

The patriot rose above the divine. He taught his country to protest against her grievances, and gave her a spirit by which she redressed them. Besides, he created a public opinion in “a nation of slaves” and used it as a political force against a vicious system of government. “For my own part,” says Swift, referring to the imposition of the copper coinage, “who am but a man of obscure condition, I do solemnly declare in the presence of Almighty God that I will suffer the most ignominious torturing death, rather than submit to receive this accursed coin, or any other that shall be liable to these objections, until they shall be forced upon me by a law of my own country, and if that shall ever happen, I will transport myself into some foreign land, and eat the bread of poverty among a free people.”

And who was this man who touched with fire the hearts of a nation and played on their feelings as a skilful musician runs his fingers over the keys of an instrument? A simple journalist, of obscure origin, without rank or station, with nothing but a beggarly Irish living to fall back upon, yet endowed with heaven-born genius and the pride of an insulted god. He treated art like man: with the same sovereign pride scribbling his articles in haste, scorning the wretched necessity for reading them over, putting his name to nothing he wrote; letting every piece make its way on its own merits, recommended by none. Swift had the soul of a dictator and the heart of a woman.

This self-devouring heart could not understand the callousness and indifference of the world. He asked: “Do not the corruptions and villainies of men eat your flesh and consume your spirits?” Swift, like his great Master, was moved by compassion for the multitude. He knew what poverty and scorn were, even at an age when the mind expands and the path of life is sown with generous hopes. At that time, his career was crushed with the iron ring of poverty; maintained by the alms of his family; secretary to a flattered, gouty courtier, at the magnificent salary of 20l. a year, and a seat at the servants’ table: obliged to submit to the whims of my lord and the fancies of an acidulous virgin, my lord’s sister; lured with false hopes; and forced, after an attempt at independence, to resume the livery which scorched his soul. When writing his directions to servants, he was relating with bitterness what he himself had suffered; his proud heart bursting at the memory of indignities received while his lips were locked. Under an outward calm, a tempest of wrath and desire lashed his soul. Twenty years of insult and humiliation, the inner tempest raging, as all his brilliant dreams faded from hope deferred;—such was the man who moved his country to its centre and won her eternal gratitude.

In discussing the burning topics of the day, Swift had against him the king, his parliament, and all the people of England, together with the Irish government and the Irish judges. The Irish parliament, whose cause he defended, could not have saved him: that sycophant assembly could not save itself, and was besides so lowered and debased by the over-ruling power of England, that it was more likely to become his prosecutor than his protector. Swift stood like Atlas, unmoved, and so laid the foundation of his country’s liberty.

“Swift was honoured,” says Johnson, “by the populace of Ireland as their champion, patron, and instructor, and gained such power as, considered both in its extent and duration, scarce any man has ever enjoyed without greater wealth or higher station. The benefit was indeed great. He had rescued Ireland from a very oppressive and predatory invasion: and the popularity which he had gained he was very diligent to keep, by appearing forward and zealous on every occasion when the public interest was supposed to be involved. He showed clearly that wit, confederated with truth, had such fire as authority was not able to resist. He said truly of himself that Ireland was his debtor. It was from this time, when he first began to patronize the Irish, that they may date their riches and prosperity. He taught them first to know their own interest, their weight and their strength; and gave them spirit to assert that equality with their fellow-subjects, to which they have ever since been making vigorous advances, and to claim those rights which they have at last established. Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to their benefactor, for they reverenced him as a guardian and obeyed him as a dictator.”

The birth of political and patriotic spirit in Ireland may be traced to the “Drapier’s Letters.” No agitation that has since taken place in the country has been so immediately and completely successful. The whole power of the English government was found ineffectual to cope with the opposition that had been roused, and marshalled by one man. The Letters brought Swift fame and influence, and from the date of their publication, he became the most powerful and popular man in Ireland. The Irish obeyed his words as if they were the fiat of an oracle.

Swift was no hack writer, lending his pen to any administration that paid for his services; his individuality placed him above the herd of writers, and he scorned to be used in this way. When Harley sent him a 50l. cheque for his first articles in the Examiner, he returned it, and haughtily demanded an apology, which was promptly given. He warned the ministers that he acted with them on terms of equality, and that he would not tolerate even coldness on their part; “for it is what I would hardly bear from a crowned head; no subject’s favour was worth it.” He afterwards explained, “If we let these great ministers pretend too much, there will be no governing them.”

After the publication of the fourth Drapier’s Letter, the government offered a reward for the apprehension of the printer; Swift was so enraged at this proceeding that he suddenly entered the reception-room, elbowed his way up to the Lord-Lieutenant, and, with indignation on his countenance and thunder in his voice, said: “So, my Lord, this is a glorious exploit you performed yesterday in suffering a proclamation against a poor shop-keeper, whose only crime is an honest endeavour to save his country from ruin;” and then added, with a bitter laugh, “I suppose your lordship will expect a statue in copper for your services to Mr. Wood.”

The accession of George I. exiled Swift to Ireland, at that time the most impoverished country on the face of the globe. Swift regarded Dublin as a “good enough place to die in.” No wonder, when he showed that there were not found in it five gentlemen who could give a dinner at which a scholar and gentleman could find congenial companionship. Ireland then was in a state of national ruin and semi-barbarism; one of the most palpable evils of Irish life was absenteeism. It was the habit of the English officials elected to remunerative offices, to employ a deputy to perform the duty on the tenth of the salary—to come over in batches, landing at Ringsend on Saturday night, receiving the sacrament at the nearest church on Sunday morning, taking the oaths on Monday in the Courts, and setting sail for England in the afternoon, leaving no trace of their existence in Ireland, save their names on the civil list as recipients of a salary.

Out of a total rental of 1,800,000l. about 600,000l. was spent in England. There was nothing to encourage a landlord to live in the country; no political career was open to him; all the offices in his country went to strangers. He was without education or any intellectual interest; nothing was left him but lavish displays of brutal luxury, endless carouses, and barbaric hospitality. The Irish landlords were despised for their rude manners by the fresh importations from England; they repaid this contempt on their tenants.

The vast majority of the Catholics were without the protection of the law; absolutely ignorant and sunk in an abyss of poverty. The poor peasant, as soon as the potatoes were planted, shut up his damp, smoky hut, and started soliciting alms through the country: idle and lazy, he wandered from house to house. Begging became a recognized profession. Adepts were hired to complete the family group, and these shared the spoils of the season; girls were debauched, in order that they might, as fictitious widows, move compassion and earn alms. In winter they camped together in companies; the length and breadth of the country was cursed with a brood of hedgers, born of adultery and incest, herding together in troops, when the ties of relationship were as completely lost as in a herd of cattle.

The English clique at the Castle were too much occupied in checking fancied disaffection and dispensing patronage to secure the support of hungry partisans, to care for the welfare of the masses. The local gentry, despised by the governing clique, allowed matters to drift from bad to worse. The better part of the population left the country in disgust. Such was the condition of Ireland when Swift stood out as its defender. The wrongs of Ireland cried to heaven for adjustment.

Since the days of Charles II. the Irish had been forbidden to seek a market in England for their cattle. Since the last years of William III. harsh laws crushed out the woollen trade, restricting it to a precarious market formed by a contraband trade with France, every year getting worse. Misery wanted only a voice to utter its lamentation. Swift assumed this function in his “Proposal for the universal use of manufactures,” published in 1720. Comments on the pamphlets are needless.

The evil of absenteeism was of ancient date and the efforts to eradicate it still older. By a statute of Richard II., two-thirds of the estate of an absentee were forfeited to the Crown. The Lancastrian kings pursued the same policy. Henry VIII. made a strong effort to correct the abuse, by resuming whole Irish estates of some English nobles who were habitual absentees. Under the early Stuarts the same course was pursued, but the evil continues to our own day without any abatement. In Swift’s time, residence had not been encouraged; statutes to enforce it remained on the statute-book, but they were a dead letter. The landlord drew the rent from Ireland, without helping to pay the taxes. He spent it in England and frequently more than the amount, leaving the estates encumbered with mortgages in the hands of English mortgagees. The holder of an Irish office thought only of its emoluments, and was indignant at any suggestion of living in the country burdened with his support, and nominally entitled to his services. The land was reduced to a state of bankruptcy and desolation; famine swept through it, and the people were perishing in thousands. It was at this terrible juncture that Swift put forth in despair his “Modest Proposal,” one of the last efforts of his marvellous genius, and it shamed the government into taking some steps to redress the suffering which prevailed.

“Swift’s pieces relating to Ireland,” says Edmund Burke, “are those of a public nature, in which the Dean appears, as usual, in the best light, because they do honour to his heart as well as his head, furnishing some additional proofs, that though he was very free in his abuse of the inhabitants of that country, as well natives as foreigners, he had their interest sincerely at heart, and perfectly understood it. His sermon on doing good, though peculiarly adapted to Ireland, and Wood’s design upon it, contains perhaps the best motives to Patriotism that was ever delivered within so small a compass.”

There is no need to refer here to the other works of genius that came from his pen; they are well known. The object of the present writer is to deal exclusively with what has reference to Ireland, and while exhibiting Swift as a patriot, no attempt is made to exclude his faults or deny his imperfections; those faults were redeemed by devoted friendship and noble generosity.

His friendship with Addison continued till the day of his death, and so strong was the bond between them, that when the two met for an evening, they never wished for a third person to support or enliven the conversation. Of him, Pope said:—“Nothing of you can die; nothing of you can decay; nothing of you can suffer; nothing of you can be obscured or locked up from esteem and admiration, except what is at the Deanery. May the rest of you be as happy hereafter as honest men may expect and need not doubt, while they know that their Maker is merciful.” One can imagine how dear he was to those friends, when Bolingbroke writes:—“I love you for a thousand things, for none more than for the just esteem and love which you have for all the sons of Adam.” No one esteemed Swift more than Lord Carteret, who, when hearing of his illness, wrote:—“That you may enjoy the continuation of all happiness is my wish. As to futurity I know your name will be remembered, when the names of Kings, Lord-Lieutenants, Archbishops, and Parliamentary politicians will be forgotten. At last you yourself must fall into oblivion, which may be less than one thousand years, though the term may be uncertain and will depend on the progress that barbarity and ignorance may make, notwithstanding the sedulous endeavours of the great Prelates in this and succeeding ages.”The account of Swift thus coming from men of the greatest genius of their age, carries with it incontestable evidence in his favour, and completely pulverizes the slanderous accusations heaped on him by his enemies. The manly tone of his writing penetrated the character of the whole English colony and bore fruit, long after the proud heart was laid at rest in the great Irish cathedral. The place is marked by an inscription written by himself, and touchingly refers to a time when the heart can no longer be tortured with fierce indignation born from the contemplation of licensed injustice. The character of Swift has long been vindicated, for animosity perishes, but humanity is eternal.