ognate
expressions to distress their political opponents. At the same
time, these cries had their effects, and created a great deal of
mischief. The Roman Catholics, in particular, were cruelly treated
because of the anxiety for the Protestant succession, and among the
lower tradesmen, for whom such cries would be of serious meaning, a
petty persecution against their Roman Catholic fellow-tradesmen
continually prevailed. Monck Mason draws attention to some curious
instances. (See his "History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," p. 399,
note y.)

In the "Journals of the Irish House of Commons" (vol. ii., p. 77)
is the record of a petition presented in the year 1695, by the
Protestant porters of the city of Dublin, against one Darby Ryan,
"a papist and notoriously disaffected." This Ryan was complained of
for employing those of his own persuasion and affection to carry a
cargo of coals he had bought, to his own customers. The petitioners
complained that they, Protestants, were "debased and hindered from
their small trade and gains." Another set of petitioners was the
drivers of hackney coaches. They complained that, "before the late
trouble, they got a livelihood by driving coaches in and about the
city of Dublin, but since that time, so many papists had got
coaches, and drove them with such ordinary horses, that the
petitioners could hardly get bread.... They therefore prayed the
house that none but Protestant hackney-coachmen may have liberty to
keep and drive hackney-coaches." Swift may have had these instances
in his mind when he urges that the criers who cry their wares in
Dublin should be True Protestants, and should give security to the
government for permission to cry.

In a country where such absurd complaints could be seriously
presented, and as seriously considered, a genuine apprehension must
have existed. The Whigs in making capital out of this existing
feeling stigmatized their Tory opponents as High Churchmen, and
therefore very little removed from Papists, and therefore
Jacobites. Of course there were no real grounds for such epithets,
but they indulged in them nevertheless, with the addition of
insinuations and suggestions--no insinuation being too feeble or
too far-fetched so long as it served.

Swift, writing in the person of