hat shall ever be
granted, but only a small prolongation of life, until God shall
miraculously dispose the hearts of our neighbours, our kinsmen, our
fellow-protestants, fellow-subjects, and fellow rational creatures, to
permit us to starve without running further in debt. I am informed that
our national debt (and God knows how we wretches came by that
fashionable thing a national debt) is about two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds; which is at least one-third of the whole kingdom's
rents, after our absentees and other foreign drains are paid, and about
fifty thousand pounds more than all the cash.

It seems there are several schemes for raising a fund to pay the
interest of this formidable sum (not the principal, for this is allowed
impossible). The necessity of raising such a fund, is strongly and
regularly pleaded, from the late deficiencies in the duties and customs.
And is it the fault of Ireland that these funds are deficient? If they
depend on trade, can it possibly be otherwise, while we have neither
liberty to trade, nor money to trade with; neither hands to work, nor
business to employ them, if we had? Our diseases are visible enough both
in their causes and effects; and the cures are well known, but
impossible to be applied.

If my steward comes and tells me, that my rents are sunk so low, that
they are very little more than sufficient to pay my servants their
wages; have I any other course left than to cashier four in six of my
rascally footmen, and a number of other varlets in my family, of whose
insolence the whole neighbourhood complains? And I should think it
extremely severe in any law, to force me to maintain a household of
fifty servants, and fix their wages, before I had offered my rent-roll
upon oath to the legislators.

To return from digressing: I am told one scheme for raising a fund to
pay the interest of our national debt, is, by a further duty of forty
shillings a tun upon wine. Some gentlemen would carry this matter much
further, by raising it to twelve pounds; which, in a manner, would
amount to a prohibition: thus weakly arguing from the practice of
England.

I have often taken notice, both in print and in discourse, that there is
no topic so fallacious, either in talk or in writing, as to argue how we
ought to act in Ireland, from the example of England, Holland, France,
or any other country, whose inhabitants are allowed the common rights
and liberties of humankind. I could undertak