no force in this argument; yet so preternatural a sum, as one hundred and ten thousand pounds, raised all on a sudden (for there is no dallying with hunger) is just in proportion with raising a million and a half in England; which, as things now stand, would probably bring that opulent kingdom under some difficulties. You are concerned how strange and surprising it would be in foreign parts to hear that the poor were starving in a RICH Country, &c. Are you in earnest ? is Ireland the rich country you mean? or are you insulting our poverty? were you ever out of Ireland? or were you ever in it till of late? You may probably have a good employment, and are saving all you can to purchase a good estate in England. But by talking so familiarly of one hundred and ten thousand pounds, by a tax upon a few commodities, it is plain, you are either naturally or affectedly ignorant of our present condition; or else you would know and allow, that such a sum is not to be raised here, without a general excise; since in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than England ever did, in the height of war. And when you have brought over your corn, who will be the buyers? most certainly not the poor, who will not be able to purchase the twentieth part of it. Sir, upon the whole, your paper is a very crude piece, liable to more objections than there are lines; but, I think, your meaning is good, and so far you are pardonable. If you will propose a general contribution for supporting the poor in potatoes and buttermilk, till the new. corn comes in, perhaps you may succeed better? because the thing at least is possible: and I think if our brethren in England would contribute upon this emergency, out of the million they gain from us every year, they would do a piece of justice as well as charity. In the mean time, go and preach to your own tenants, to fall to the plough as fast as they can; and prevail with your neighbouring squires, to do the same with theirs ; or else die with the guilt of having driven away half the inhabitants, and starving the rest. For as to your scheme of raising one hundred and ten thousand pounds, it is as vain as that of Rabelais; which was to squeeze out wind from the posteriors of a dead ass. We want But, why all this concern for the poor? them not as the country is now managed; they may follow thousands of their leaders, and seek their bread abroad. Where the plough has no work, one family can do the business of fifty, and you may send away the other forty-nine. An admirable piece of husbandry, never known or practised by the wisest nations, who erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country! If so wretched a state of things would allow it, me, thinks I could have a malicious pleasure, after all the warning I have in vain given the public, at my own peril, for several years past, to see the consequences and events answering in every particular. I pretend to no sagacity: what I writ was little more than what I had discoursed to several persons, who were generally, of my opinion and it was obvious to every common understanding, that such effects must needs follow from such causes. A fair issue of things begun upon party, rage, while some sacrificed the public to fury, and others to ambition: while a spirit of faction and oppression reigned in every part of the country, where gentlemen, instead of consulting the ease of their tenants, or cultivating their lands, were worrying one another upon points of whig and tory, of high church and low church; which no more concerned them than the long and famous controversy of strops for razors: while agricul 1 CONTENTS A modest Proposal for preventing the Children of poor People A Vindication of his Excellency John Lord Carteret, from the Charge of favouring none but Tories, High Churchmen, The Presbyterians' Plea of Merit in order to take off the Test, A Narrative of the several Attempts, which the Dissenters of Ireland, have made for a Repeal of the Sacramental Test, Considerations upon two Bills sent down from the House of |