or a house so convenient as an English hog-sty to receive
them.[56] These indeed may be comfortable sights to an English
spectator, who comes for a short time only to learn the language, and
returns back to his own country, whither he finds all our wealth
transmitted.

_Nostra miseria magnus es._

There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland, which is
not a logical demonstration of its poverty. The rise of our rents is
squeezed out of the very blood and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of
the tenants who live worse than English beggars. The lowness of
interest, in all other countries a sign of wealth, is in us a proof of
misery, there being no trade to employ any borrower. Hence alone comes
the dearness of land, since the savers have no other way to lay out
their money. Hence the dearness of necessaries for life, because the
tenants cannot afford to pay such extravagant rates for land (which they
must take, or go a-begging) without raising the price of cattle, and of
corn, although they should live upon chaff. Hence our increase of
buildings in this City, because workmen have nothing to do but employ
one another, and one half of them are infallibly undone. Hence the daily
increase of bankers, who may be a necessary evil in a trading country,
but so ruinous in ours, who for their private advantage have sent away
all our silver, and one third of our gold, so that within three years
past the running cash of the Nation, which was about five hundred
thousand pounds, is now less than two, and must daily diminish unless we
have liberty to coin, as well as that important Kingdom the Isle of Man,
and the meanest Prince in the German Empire, as I before observed.[57]

I have sometimes thought, that this paradox of the Kingdom growing rich,
is chiefly owing to those worthy gentlemen the BANKERS, who, except some
custom-house officers, birds of passage, oppressive thrifty squires, and
a few others that shall be nameless, are the only thriving people among
us: And I have often wished that a law were enacted to hang up half a
dozen bankers every year, and thereby interpose at least some short
delay, to the further ruin of Ireland.

"Ye are idle, ye are idle," answered Pharaoh to the Israelites, when
they complained to his Majesty, that they were forced to make bricks
without straw.

England enjoys every one of these advantages for enriching a Nation,
which I have above enumerated, and into the bargain, a go