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and perfidiousness. All our merit is to be less guilty one than another under one of these heads.

Dissertations for the conduct of life are as gravely composed upon these topics, as if they were as infallible as mathematical truths. It cost me a great deal of pains to study by what means I should refute such scandalous intimations against my very nature. But the more I reflected upon those abuses, I grew the less concerned to answer them, and finally resolved upon this.

They are perhaps in the right who speak this of mere women; and it is the business of ingenious debauch'd men, who regard us only as such, to give us those ideas of ourselves, that we may become their more easy prey.

I believed it therefore the safest and surest method of gainsaying such light accounts of our sex to think them a truth, till I had arrived by the perusal of more solid authors, to a constancy of mind and settled opinion of persons and things, which should place me above being pleased or dissatisfied with praise or dispraise, upon account of beauty or deformity, or any other advantages or disadvantages, but what flowed from the habits and dispositions of my soul.

I resolve therefore to confine my little studies, which are to lead to the conduct of my life, to the writings of the most eminent of our divines, and from thence, as I have heard young students do in the study of a science, make for my own private use a common place, that may direct me in all the relations of life, that do now, or possibly may, concern

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have others do to us, if we were in their case and circumstances and they in ours.

You that are parents, and have to deal with the world, ought to be just and equal in all your dealings; in the first place, for the sake of your own souls, and next for the sake of your children. Not only that you may entail no curse upon the estate you leave them, but likewise that you may teach them no injustice by the example you set before them, which in this particular they will be as apt to imitate as in any one thing, because of the present worldly advantages which it seems to bring, and because justice is in truth a manly virtue, and least understood by children. Wherefore, injustice is a vice which they will soonest practise, and with the least reluctancy, because they have least knowledge of it in many particular cases, and because also they have so little sense of the great virtue of honesty. They should not be allowed to cheat, no, not in play and sport, even when they play for little or nothing; for if they practise it in that case, and be unjust in a little, they will be much more tempted to be so when they can gain a great deal by it.

Xenophon, in his Institution of Cyrus, which he designed for the idea of a well-educated prince, tells us this little but very instructive story concerning young Cyrus; that his governor, the better to make him understand the nature of justice, put this case to him :-" You see there," said he to Cyrus, " two boys playing, of different stature; the lesser of them has a very long coat, and the taller a very short one. Now, if you were a judge, how would you dispose of these two garments?" Cyrus immediately, and with very good reason, as he thought, passes this sudden sentence: "The taller boy should have the longer garment, and he that was of the lower stature the shorter," because this certainly was fittest for them both. Upon which his governor rebukes him to this purpose, telling him that if he were to make two coats for them he said well; but he did not put this case to him as a tailor, but as a judge, and as such he had given a very wrong sentence, for a judge ought not to consider what is most fit, but what is just; not who could make best use of a thing, but who has the most right to it. By these familiar ways may the principles of virtue be instilled into children, and there is nothing wherein they may be more easily misled than in justice, in matter of right and wrong. They should therefore be taught the general rules of both, because if we would teach them to do justice, and to avoid doing injustice, we must teach them to know what is justice and what injustice; for many are unjust merely out of ignorance, and for want of knowing better, and cannot help it.

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Ornament from the First Edition of "The Beggar's Opera."

CHAPTER VIII.

UNDER GEORGE I. AND GEORGE II.-A.D. 1714 TO A.D. 1760.

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brought a very light cloud over the relation between the friends. It did not prevent their friendly greetings of each other, but Addison was then within a few months of his death. He died on the 17th of June, 1719, aged forty-seven, and after his death Steele missed no opportunity of paying open love and honour to his memory.

In the following year the Lord Chamberlain punished Steele for opposing the Peerage Bill (which was thrown out) by depriving him of his patent as Governor of Drury Lane. The sudden fine of £700 a year caused money embarrassments. Sir Robert Walpole, who had gone out of office in 1717, returned to power in April, 1721, and in May of that year Steele was restored to his office in the theatre and its emoluments. In 1722 he produced his fourth play, "The Conscious Lovers." In 1723 he began two other comedies, but his health failing, he went to Bath, and thence to Wales. Soon afterwards he withdrew wholly to Wales, and lived near Carmarthen in a pleasant house---now a farmhouse— upon a height overlooking the vale of the Towy. There he died on the 1st of September, 1729, aged

ADDISON, at the beginning of the reign of George I.,
was Chief Secretary in Ireland under the Earl of
Sunderland. Steele entered Parliament again as
member for Boroughbridge, was made Deputy Lieu-
tenant for Middlesex, and knighted upon bringing up
an address. At the request of the players, to whom
he had always been a friend, he replaced William
Collier, Tory M.P. for Truro, as Governor of Drury
Lane, and one of the first uses he made of his
influence in the theatre was to produce his friend
Addison's comedy of "The Drummer." In 1715
there was the Rebellion in the North, and Addison,
at the request of the Whig Government, now in power,
wrote a series of essays under the name of "The
Freeholder," which appeared on Mondays and Fridays
from December 23rd, 1715, to June 29th, 1716, to
persuade men to accept the monarchy as settled by
the Revolution. The Earl of Sunderland resigned,
in August, 1716, his office of Lord Lieutenant, and
Addison, no longer Chief Secretary in Ireland,
married in the same month Charlotte, Countess
Dowager of Warwick, and began to live at Holland
House. In April, 1717, the Earl of Sunderland
became Secretary of State, with Addison, aged forty-fifty-eight.
five, for colleague. He was then suffering from asthma
and dropsy. Steele was in the same year lame with
gout. After the failure of the Rebellion of 1715,
Steele had pleaded for mercy to the condemned
lords, and presented a petition. He was made one
of the Commissioners of forfeited estates, which
excluded other official employment. At this time
he owed no more than the pay due to him would
clear. In December, 1718, Steele's wife died, aged
forty, leaving a son and two daughters. Addison's
failing health caused him in that year to resign office,
but he was interested in a Peerage Bill which his
government had introduced to restrain the power of
the Crown in creation of new peers. The bill, de-
signed to prevent a corrupt use of power by creating
new peers to secure a vote, as had been once done
by advice of Robert Harley in the preceding reign,
would have transformed our peerage into a caste,
feebly instead of vigorously recruited by drawing
into its ranks the representatives of wealth, wisdom,
or genius among the people. Steele saw the mis-
take, and opposed the bill in a series of four papers,
connected together by the title of "The Plebeian,"
of which the first number appeared on the 14th of
March, 1719. Addison replied to it on the 19th
with "The Old Whig." This division of opinion

"I was told," wrote Mr. Victor, "he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last, and would often be carried out of a summer's evening, when the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer." Two daughters survived Steele. He had lost a son Richard in 1716, and a son Eugene in 1723; his youngest child, his daughter Mary, died of consumption in the year after her father's death. There remained the eldest of Steele's children, his daughter Elizabeth, who married the Hon. John Trevor, a Welsh judge, afterwards the third Lord Trevor.

Jonathan Swift's mother died in 1710, when he was in his forty-third year, and he wrote in his notebook, "I have now lost my barrier between me and death. God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to have been. If the way to heaven be through piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is there." In September of that year Swift was lodging in Bury Street, next door to Mrs. Van Homrigh. Bartholomew Van Homrigh was a Dutch merchant of Amsterdam who went to Dublin at the Revolution, and was appointed by

1 See in this Library "English Plays," pages 412-415.

He

William III. Commissioner of the Revenue. married an Irishwoman of low birth, and left at his death, in 1703, about £16,000 in equal division to his wife, his two sons, and his two daughters, Esther and Mary. The family was sickly. The sons went abroad. The elder died beyond sea, and the younger died soon after. The widow and two daughters spent money in London till the widow died; in London Swift became acquainted with them, and undertook to play tutor to Esther, whose education had been neglected, who, says Lord Orrery, was "far from being either beautiful or genteel," and who was certainly obtrusive. She fell in love with Swift, and told him she had done so. This was at the end of Queen Anne's reign. Swift was made, in 1713, Dean of St. Patrick's, and he wrote for Miss Van Homrigh a poem on her declaration to him, his title of Dean, Decanus, twisted round into CadenusCadenus and Vanessa-in which he expressed his surprise and pointed out her error, but made his bitter pill so small and covered it with so much sugar that she took the dose for a sugar-plum. Swift went to his Deanery in Dublin after the change of reign which placed the Whigs again in power, and did his duty by the Church. There is reason to think that in 1716 he was married privately to Esther Johnson (Stella) in the Deanery garden. If so, it was at her wish for the private satisfaction of her mind. If he had not felt that he must forego marrying as others marry, while he yet desired to join himself in daily converse of mind to the woman whom he wholly loved, he would have married Esther Johnson years before. But there was that within which made Swift, in later life, keep his birthdays by reading to himself the third chapter of Job, which begins, "After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish in which I was born." The attacks of giddiness and deafness could not be continuously misinterpreted, nor the shadow of the coming end in many a mood of inner consciousness. He would not transmit the curse to a child, yet the star of his life was indeed Esther Johnson. In 1717 Esther and Mary Van Homrigh, after their mother's death, came to live about ten miles from Dublin, in a house they had, Marley Abbey, near Cellbridge. Swift did not visit them. But in 1720, in which year Swift published proposals for the universal use of Irish linen manufactures by the Irish people, Mary Van Homrigh became dangerously ill. Then Swift, in simple kindness, called on the sisters. Mary died, and Swift did not withdraw himself from Vanessa, but again unwisely humoured her, the last survivor of a sickly house, herself not marked for a long life, until she presumed so far as to write to Esther Johnson and ask what were her relations with the Dean. When this was sent on to Swift, he rode in anger to Marley Abbey, placed the letter upon the table before Miss Van Homrigh, left her without a word, and never saw her again. That was in 1720. Miss Van Homrigh died in 1723, and left evidence of the diseased state of her mind by requiring that "Cadenus and Vanessa," with Swift's letters to her, should be published. The scandal-loving public proceeded to the manufacture of a large stock of false

sentiment that even to this day finds currency. Stella left Dublin for a time to escape from it, but when somebody said to her that the Dean must have cared for Miss Van Homrigh very much to write so beautifully as he did in "Cadenus and Vanessa," she replied, "It is very well known that the Dean can write beautifully on a broomstick."

It was in the year after Miss Van Homrigh's death that Swift won immense popularity in Ireland by an attack upon the copper coinage that the English Government was then introducing. Coins of small value had become so scarce in Ireland that it was often difficult to give change to a customer. The Government ordered a supply of copper money, and gave to Mr. Wood, an ironmaster at Wolverhampton, the contract for making it. When the outcry was led by Swift against the coins thus introduced, Sir Isaac Newton was the Master of the Mint. He was asked to examine the new coinage, and certified that in intrinsic value it was rather better than that current in England. Swift's letters against it, signed M. B. Drapier, because in the character of Drapier he had recommended the use of Irish linen by the Irish, are amusing for their ingenious but quite honest extravagance. This is the first of them.

A

LETTER

TO THE

Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common People

OF

IRELAND,

CONCERNING THE

BRASS-HALF-PENCE

Coined by one WILLIAM WOOD, Hard-ware-Man,

With a DESIGN to have them pass in this KINGDOM.

Wherein is Shewn

The Power of his PATENT, the Value of his HALFPENCE, and how far every Person may be obliged to take the same in Payments, and how to behave himself in Case such an Attempt should be made by WOOD, or any other Person.

(Very proper to be kept in every Family.)

By M. B. DRAPIER.

LETTER I.

To the Tradesmen, Shopkeepers, Farmers, and Country People in
general, of the kingdom of Ireland.
BRETHREN, FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, AND FELLOW-SUBJECTS,
What I intend now to say to you is, next to your duty to
God, and the care of your salvation, of the greatest concern

to yourselves and your children; your bread and clothing, and every common necessary of life entirely depend upon it. Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you as men, as Christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper with the utmost attention, or get it read to you by others; which, that you may do at the less expense, I have ordered the printer to sell it at the lowest rate.

It is a great fault among you, that when a person writes with no other intention than to do you good, you will not be at the pains to read his advices. One copy of this paper may serve a dozen of you, which will be less than a farthing apiece. It is your folly that you have no common or general interest in your view, not even the wisest among you; neither do you know, or enquire, or care who are your friends, or who are your enemies.

About four years ago a little book was written to advise all people to wear the manufactures of this our own dear country. It had no other design, said nothing against King or Parliament, or any person whatsoever; yet the poor printer was prosecuted two years with the utmost violence; and even some weavers themselves, for whose sake it was written, being upon the jury, found him guilty. This would be enough to discourage any man from endeavouring to do you good, when you will either neglect him, or fly in his face for his pains; and when he must expect only danger to himself, and to be fined and imprisoned, perhaps to his ruin.

However, I cannot but warn you once more of the manifest destruction before your eyes, if you do not behave yourselves as you ought.

I will therefore first tell you the plain story of the fact; and then I will lay before you how you ought to act, in common prudence, and according to the laws of your country.

The fact is thus: It having been many years since copper halfpence or farthings were last coined in this kingdom, they have been for some time very scarce, and many counterfeits passed about under the name of "raps." Several applications were made to England that we might have liberty to coin new ones, as in former times we did; but they did not succeed. At last one Mr. Wood, a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer, procured a patent under his Majesty's broad seal, to coin £108,000 in copper for this kingdom; which patent, however, did not oblige any one here to take them unless they pleased. Now, you must know that the halfpence and farthings in England pass for very little more than they are worth; and if you should beat them to pieces, and sell them to the brazier, you would not lose much above a penny in a shilling. But Mr. Wood made his halfpence of such base metal, and so much smaller than the English ones, that the brazier would hardly give you above a penny of good money for a shilling of his; so that this sum of £108,000, in good gold and silver, must be given for trash that will not be worth above eight or nine thousand pounds real value. But this is not the worst; for Mr. Wood, when he pleaseth, may by stealth send over another £108,000, and buy all our goods for eleven parts in twelve under the value. For example, if a hatter sells a dozen of hats for five shillings apiece, which amounts to three pounds, and receives the pay. ment in Wood's coin, he really receives only the value of five shillings.

Perhaps you will wonder how such an ordinary fellow as this Mr. Wood could have so much interest as to get his Majesty's broad seal for so great a sum of bad money to be sent to this poor country; and that all the nobility and gentry here could not obtain the same favour, and let us make our own halfpence as we used to do. Now I will make that matter very plain: We are at a great distance from the

King's court, and have nobody there to solicit for us, although a great number of lords and squires, whose estates are here, and are our countrymen, spend all their lives and fortunes there. But this same Mr. Wood was able to attend constantly for his own interest. He is an Englishman, and had great friends, and, it seems, knew very well where to give money to those that would speak to others that could speak to the King, and would tell a fair story. And his Majesty, and perhaps the great lord or lords who advised him, might think it was for our country's good; and so, as the lawyers express it, the King was deceived in his grant, which often happens in all reigns. And I am sure, if his Majesty knew that such a patent-if it should take effect according to the desire of Mr. Wood-would utterly ruin this kingdom, which hath given such great proofs of its loyalty, he would immediately recall it, and perhaps show his displeasure to somebody or other; but a word to the wise is enough. Most of you have heard with what anger our honourable House of Commons received an account of this Wood's patent. There were several fine speeches made upon it, and plain proofs that it was all a wicked cheat from the bottom to the top: and several smart votes were printed, which that same Wood had the assurance to answer likewise in print, and in so confident a way, as if he were a better man than our whole Parliament put together.

This Wood, as soon as his patent was passed, or soon after, sends over a great many barrels of those halfpence to Cork and other seaport towns, and to get them off, offered an hundred pounds in his coin for seventy or eighty in silver; but the collectors of the King's customs very honestly refused to take them, and so did almost everybody else. And since the Parliament has condemned them, and desired the King that they might be stopped, all the kingdom do abominate

them.

But Wood is still working underhand to force his halfpence upon us; and if he can, by the help of his friends in England, prevail so far as to get an order that the commissioners and collectors of the King's money shall receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case: for the common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale-house, will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or ale-wife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper, or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be paid in Wood's money; for example, twenty pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in all things else, and not part with his goods till he gets the

money.

For suppose you go to an ale-house with that base money, and the landlord gives you a quart for four of those halfpence, what must the victualler do? His brewer will not be paid in that coin; or, if the brewer should be such a fool, the farmers will not take it from them for their beer,' because they are bound by their leases to pay their rents in good and lawful money of England, which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; and the squire, their landlord, will never be so bewitched to take such trash for his land; so that it must certainly stop somewhere or other, and wherever it stops it is the same thing, and we are all undone.

The common weight of these halfpence is between four and five to an ounce. Suppose five; then three shillings and fourpence will weigh a pound, and consequently twenty

1 Beer. First-English "bere," barley.

shillings will weigh six pounds butter weight. Now there are many hundred farmers who pay two hundred pounds a year rent; therefore, when one of these farmers comes with his half-year's rent, which is one hundred pounds, 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 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 has sixteen thousand pounds a year. Now if he sends for his rent to town, as it is likely he does, he must have two hundred and fifty horses to bring up his half-year's rent, and two or three great cellars in his house for stowage. But what the bankers will do I cannot tell; for I am assured that some great bankers keep by them forty thousand pounds in ready cash to answer all payments, which sum, in Mr. Wood's money, would require twelve hundred horses to carry it.

For my own part, I am already resolved what to do. I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks, and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with my neighbours the butchers, and bakers, and brewers, and the rest, goods for goods; and the little gold and silver I have I will keep by me, like my heart's blood, till better times, or until I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy Mr. Wood's money, as my father did the brass money in King James's time, who could buy ten pounds of it with a guinea; and I hope to get as much for a pistole, and so purchase bread from those who will be such fools as to sell it me.

These halfpence, if they once pass, will soon be counterfeited, because it may be cheaply done, the stuff is so base. The Dutch likewise will probably do the same thing, and send them over to us to pay for our goods; and Mr. Wood will never be at rest, but coin on; so that in some years we shall have at least five times £108,000 of this lumber. Now the current money of this kingdom is not reckoned to be above four hundred thousand pounds in all; and while there is a silver sixpence left, these blood-suckers will never be quiet.

When once the kingdom is reduced to such a condition, I will tell you what must be the end. The gentlemen of estates will turn off their tenants for want of payment; because, as I told you before, the tenants are obliged by their leases to pay sterling, which is lawful current money of England. Then they will turn their own farmers, as too many of them do already, run all into sheep where they can, keeping only such other cattle as are necessary. Then they will be their own merchants, and send their wool, and butter, and hides, and linen beyond sea, for ready money, and wine, and spices, and silks. They will keep only a few miserable cottagers; the farmers must rob or beg, or leave their country; the shopkeepers in this and every other town must break and starve; for it is the landed man that maintains the merchant, and shopkeeper and handicraftsman.

But when the squire turns farmer and merchant himself, all the good money he gets from abroad he will hoard up to send for England, and keep some poor tailor or weaver, and the like, in his own house, who will be glad to get bread at any rate.

I should never have done if I were to tell you all the miseries that we shall undergo, if we be so foolish and wicked as to take this cursed coin. It would be very hard if all Ireland should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other, that Mr. Wood should weigh down this

whole kingdom, by which England gets above a million of good money every year clear into their pockets; and that is more than the English do by all the world besides.

But your great comfort is, that as his Majesty's patent doth not oblige you to take this money, so the laws have not given the Crown a power of forcing the subject to take what money the King pleases; for then, by the same reason, we might be bound to take pebble-stones, or cockle-shells, or stamped leather, for current coin, if ever we should happen to live under an ill prince, who might likewise, by the same power, make a guinea pass for ten pounds, a shilling for twenty shillings, and so on, by which he would in a short time get all the silver and gold of the kingdom into his own hands, and leave us nothing but brass or leather, or what he pleased. Neither is anything reckoned more cruel and oppressive in the French Government than their common practice of calling in all their money after they have sunk it very low, and then coining it anew at a much higher value, which, however, is not the thousandth part so wicked as this abominable project of Mr. Wood. For the French give their subjects silver for silver, and gold for gold; but this fellow will not so much as give us good brass or copper for our gold and silver, nor even a twelfth part of their worth.

Having said this much, I will now go on to tell you the judgment of some great lawyers on this matter, whom I fee'd on purpose for your sakes, and got their opinions under their hands, that I might be sure I went upon good grounds.

A famous law book, called the "Mirror of Justice," discoursing of the charters, or laws, ordained by our ancient kings, declares the law to be as follows: "It was ordained that no king of this realm should change or impair the money, or make any other money than of gold or silver, without the assent of all the counties; that is, as my Lord Coke says, without the assent of Parliament."

This book is very ancient, and of great authority for the time in which it was wrote, and with that character is often quoted by that great lawyer, my Lord Coke. By the laws of England several metals are divided into lawful or true metal, and unlawful or false metal. The former comprehends silver or gold, the latter all baser metals. That the former is only to pass in payments appears by an Act of Parliament made the twentieth year of Edward the First, called "The Statute concerning the passing of Pence,” which I give you here as I got it translated into English, for some of our laws at that time were, as I am told, writ in Latin:-"Whoever in buying or selling presumes to refuse an halfpenny or farthing of lawful money, bearing the stamp which it ought to have, let him be seized on as a contemner of the King's Majesty, and cast into prison."

By this statute, no person is to be reckoned a contemner of the King's Majesty, and for that crime to be committed to prison, but he who refuseth to accept the King's coin made of lawful metal, by which, as I observed before, silver and gold only are intended.

That this is the true construction of the Act appears not only from the plain meaning of the words, but from my Lord Coke's observation upon it. "By this Act," says he, "it appears that no subject can be forced to take in buying or selling, or other payment, any money made but of lawful metal; that is, of silver or gold."

The law of England gives the King all mines of gold and silver, but not the mines of other metals; the reason of which prerogative or power, as it is given by my Lord Coke, is because money can be made of gold and silver, but not of other metals.

Pursuant to this opinion, halfpence and farthings were anciently made of silver; which is evident from the Act of

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