write a Book against the dreadful Intemperance of this Age and
this Country; tho' I doubt if it wou'd do us much Service; for there is
a Time, when the noblest Medicines are of no Use in a Distemper, and I
fear our political Diseases are now so desperate, that to die as easily
as we can, and to put it off as long as we can, is all our poor Country
can hope for. I will therefore leave this, and go to another great
Obstacle to the welfare of _Ireland_, and that is the want of Tillage
amongst us.

PRIOR. That is indeed, Mr. _Dean_, a terrible Evil, and like most of
our Evils, chiefly owing to ourselves. We do not want this additional
Hardship to many others, that what we earn by our Labours in good
Years, goes all from us in a scarce one, and leaves us either without
Food or without Money.

SWIFT. Surely if repeated Sufferings make us patient, we might expect
that our frequent Misfortunes, might make us Wise; and yet Famines are
not able to oblige us to Plow, nor our Legislature to force us to it,
by salutary Laws. One wou'd believe there were neither Thinkers or
Reasoners, (unpoison'd by French Wine) left in _Ireland_. Are we to be
a Nation of Beasts, and a few Savages to watch them, and only some
Landlords and Butchers to divide the Spoil, and share the Plunder of a
Nation, wasted of its Villages and People, as _William Rufus_, serv'd
part of _Kent_, to feed his Deer? Good God! what a Scandal are we
growing, to all the Kingdoms of the Earth, that set up for a regulated
Government, or a sensible equal Polity? Surely, _Tom_, Men with common
Sense, and common Industry, might make something else of this fertile
Country, than a wild solitary Extent of Pastures; and that Men and
civilized Creatures, might thrive here as well as Beasts and
Barbarians; and that we need not let this poor Region, look like the
one ey'd _Polyphemus_'s Island, spoil'd of its Inhabitants, and
occupied only by his Sheep and his Cattle? We all know, Grazing makes
Countries wild and horrid, their People slothful and uncultivated as
the Soil; but one might bear any Fault but starving; and yet every
three or four Years, Men here are near famishing for want of Bread, and
ready to eat up each other, like Lord _Al----ms'_ Dogs in the Kennel.
It is hard to say, what sort of People we are, for it is strange that
the universal Instinct, that governs all the lower Ranks of Animals, or
that the great Law of Self-preservation, does not influence our
Countrymen