"It is a creature (taking a vast majority) that I hate more than a toad, a viper, a wasp, a stork, a fox, or any other that you will please to add." In this he was unlike Edmund Burke, who said: "From the experience which I have had--and I have had a great deal-I have learnt to think better of mankind."

66

By the "Bank" which was kicked out with ignominy," Swift means the bill to establish a National Bank in Ireland-"a thing they call a bank" as he elsewhere spoke of it. Bankrupts," he wrote to the Archbishop, "are always for setting up banks; how then can you think a bank will fail of a majority in both Houses?" A broadside, in which he examined the published list of subscribers, thus concludes:

Total

"N. B. The total of men, women and children in Ireland, besides Frenchmen, is 2,000,000. of the land of Ireland, acres 16,800,000.

"Quære. How many of the said acres are in possession of I French baron, 1 French dean, I French curate, I French alderman, 10 French merchants, 8 Messieurs Frances, I esquire projector, esquire attorney, and 6 officers of the army, 8 women, I I London merchant, I Cork merchant, Belfast merchant, 18 merchants whose places of abode are not mentioned, I cashier, 4 bankers, 1 gentleman projector, I player, 1 chemist, 1 Popish vintner, 1 bricklayer, I chandler, 4 doctors of physic, 2 chirurgeons, 1 pewterer, 4 gentlemen attorneys, besides 28 gentlemen dealers, yet un

66

known, ut supra?" In a second tract he added to the list One French corn-cutter, one French drawer, one Deal merchant, one French apothecary, one Anabaptist clothier, one barrack-master, one butcher, and one agent's clerk, besides several South-Seaers and Mississippians." The South Sea Bubble had burst, and the Mississippi scheme had collapsed a year earlier.

"I have often wished," he wrote, "that a law were enacted to hang up half a dozen bankers every year, and thereby interpose at least some short delay to the farther ruin of Ireland." A little before the date of this letter he thus described a banker in the Day of Judgment:

"How will the caitiff wretch be scared,

When first he finds himself awake

At the last trumpet, unprepared,

And all his grand account to make!

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And he in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all his bills and gold,

Weighed in the balance and found light."

These lines would have quite a modern ring were they carved on the walls of the church lately built To the glory of God and in memory of Jay Gould."

66

Writing of his jurisdiction as Dean of St. Patrick's Swift says: "The Dean holds a court-leet in his district, and is exempt from the Lord Mayor &c." To Lord Castle Durrow he wrote on December 24,

1736: "My Housekeeper, a grave elderly woman, is called at home and in the neighbourhood Sr Robert. My Butler is Secretary, and has no other defect for that office but that he cannot write; Yet that is not singular, for I have known three Secretarys of State upon the same level, and who were too old to mend, which mine is not. My realm extends to 120 Houses, whose inhabitants constitute the Bulk of my Subjects; my Grand Jury is my House of Commons, and my Chapter the House of Lords. I must proceed no further, because my Arts of Governing are Secrets of State."

His cousin, Deane Swift, said that "Dr. Swift used to call the people who lived in the Liberty of St. Patrick's his subjects; and, without dispute, they would have fought up to their knees in blood for him." When Sergeant Bettesworth threatened him with violence, above thirty of the inhabitants of the Liberty, "in the Name of themselves and the rest of their Neighbourhood," about the end of December, 1733, presented to him a paper, in which, after stating that "a certain Man of this City hath openly sworn by the Help of several Ruffians to murder or maim the Reverend the Dean of St. Patrick's, our Neighbour, Benefactor, and Head of the Liberty of St. Patrick's," they continued: "We do unanimously declare that from our great Love and Respect to the said Dean, we will defend the Life and Limbs of the said Dean against the said Man, and all his Ruffians and Murderers, as far as the Law doth allow."

Swift, who was ill in bed, dictated to them an answer in which he spoke "of the great Amity in which the inhabitants of the Liberty, as those of the Neighbourhood," had lived with him "for near twenty Years." According to Sir Walter Scott, he "returned the deputation thanks for their zeal, but enjoined them to disperse peaceably, and, adding a donation of two or three guineas, prohibited them from getting drunk with the money, adding, 'You are my subjects, and I expect you will obey me.' Nevertheless in another place Scott, without noticing any absurdity, quotes Hawkesworth's statement that the deputation was composed of thirty of the nobility and gentry of St. Patrick's." Hawkesworth's blunder arose from his carelessly reading the account of this affair given in the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1734.

The Liberty contained five acres and a half. A year after the date of this letter Swift wrote to a friend: "You never saw anything so fine as my new Dublin plantations of elms; I wish you would come and visit them." Neither in the Deanery garden nor in the cathedral churchyard has a single tree survived of all those he planted.

XXIV.

[Indorsed, "a very droll and pleast letter."] DUBLIN. Jan 30th 1721-2.

SR, I have been these five weeks and still continue so disordered with a Noise in my Ears and Deafness that I am utterly unqualifyed for all Conversation or thinking. I used to be free of these Fits in a fortnight but now the Disease I fear is deeper rooted, and I never Stir out, or Suffer any to See me but Trebbles and countertennors, and those as Seldom as possible.

I have often thought that a Gentleman in the Country is not a bit less happy for not having Power in it, and that an Influence at Sizes and Sessions, and the like, is altogether below a wise man's Regard, especially in such a dirty obscure nook of the World as this Kingdom. If they break open your Roads, they cannot hinder you from going through them. You are a King over your own District though the neighboring Princes be your Enemyes; you can pound the Cattle that trespass on your Grounds, tho' the next Justice replevins them you are thought to be quarrelsom enough and therefore peacefull people will be less fond of provoking you. I do not value Bussy's maxim of Life, without the Circumstances of Health and