and no amount of yielding, short of complete abandonment of it, would
palliate the thing that was hateful in itself. He resented the insult.
After specific rebuttals of the various arguments urged in the report in
favour of the patent, Swift suddenly turns from the comparatively petty
and insignificant consideration as to the weight and quality of the
coins, and deals with the broad principle of justice which the granting
of the patent had ignored. Had the English Houses of Parliament and the
English Privy Council, he said, addressed the King against a similar
breach of the English people's rights, his Majesty would not have waited
to discuss the matter, nor would his ministers have dared to advise him
as they had done in this instance. "Am I a free man in England," he
exclaims, "and do I become a slave in six hours in crossing the
channel?"

The report, however, is interesting inasmuch as it assists us to
appreciate the pathetic condition of Irish affairs at the time. The very
fact that the petition of the Irish parliament could be so handled,
proves how strong had been the hold over Ireland by England, and with
what daring insistence the English ministers continued to efface the
last strongholds of Irish independence.

Monck Mason, in reviewing the report, has devoted a very elaborate note
to its details, and has fortified his criticisms with a series of
remarkable letters from the Archbishop of Dublin, which he publishes for
the first time.[1] I have embodied much of this note in the annotations
which accompany the present reprint of this letter.

[Footnote 1: "History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," pp. lxxxvi-xcv.]

The text of this third letter is based on Sir W. Scott's, collated with