out me, among which I am forced to live."

He commenced what might be called a campaign of attack in 1720, with the
publication of his tract entitled, "A Modest Proposal for the Universal
Use of Irish Manufactures." As has been pointed out in the notes
prefixed to the pamphlets in the present volume, England had,
apparently, gone to work systematically to ruin Irish manufactures. They
seemed to threaten ruin to English industries; at least so the people in
England thought. The pernicious legislation began in the reign of
Charles II. and continued in that of William III. The Irish manufacturer
was not permitted to export his products and found a precarious
livelihood in a contraband trade. Swift's "Proposal" is one of
retaliation. Since England will not allow Ireland to send out her goods,
let the people of Ireland use them, and let them join together and
determine to use nothing from England. Everything that came from England
should be burned, except the people and the coal. If England had the
right to prevent the exportation of the goods made in Ireland, she had
not the right to prevent the people of Ireland from choosing what they
should wear. The temper of the pamphlet was mild in the extreme; but the
governing officials saw in it dangerous symptoms. The pamphlet was
stigmatized as libellous and seditious, and the writer as attempting to
disunite the two nations. The printer was brought to trial, and the
pamphlet obtained a tremendous circulation. Although the jury acquitted
the printer, Chief Justice Whitshed, who had, as Swift puts it, "so
quick an understanding, that he resolved, if possible, to outdo his
orders," sent the jury back nine times to reconsider their verdict. He
even declared solemnly that the author's design was to bring in the
Pretender. This cry of bringing in the Pretender was raised on any and
every occasion, and has been well ridiculed by Swift in his "Examination
of Certain Abuses and Corruptions in the City of Dublin." The end of
Whitshed's persecution could have been foretold--it fizzled out in a
_nolle prosequi_.

Following on this interesting commencement came the lengthened agitation
against Wood's Halfpence to which we owe the remarkable series of
writings known now as the "Drapier's Letters." These are fully discussed
in the volume preceding this. But Swift found other channels in which to
continue rousing the spirit of the people, and refreshing it to further
effort. The mania for spec