pests.

Swift knew all this. He had time, between the years 1714 and 1720, to
find it out, even if he had not known of it before. But the condition
was getting worse, and his heart filled, as he told Pope in 1728, with a
"perfect rage and resentment" at "the mortifying sight of slavery,
folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live."

He commenced what might be called a campaign of attack in 1720, with the
publication of his tract entitled, "A Modest Proposal for the Universal
Use of Irish Manufactures." As has been pointed out in the notes
prefixed to the pamphlets in the present volume, England had,
apparently, gone to work systematically to ruin Irish manufactures. They
seemed to threaten ruin to English industries; at least so the people in
England thought. The pernicious legislation began in the reign of
Charles II. and continued in that of William III. The Irish manufacturer
was not permitted to export his products and found a precarious
livelihood in a contraband trade. Swift's "Proposal" is one of
retaliation. Since England will not allow Ireland to send out her goods,
let the people of Ireland use them, and let them join together and
determine to use nothing from England. Everything that came from England
should be burned, except the people and the coal. If England had the
right to prevent the exportation of the goods made in Ireland, she had
not the right to prevent the people of Ireland from choosing what they
should wear. The temper of the pamphlet was mild in the extreme; but the
governing officials saw in it dangerous symptoms. The pamphlet was
stigmatized as libellous and seditious, and the writer as attempting to
disunite the two nations. The printer was brought to trial, and the
pamphlet obtained a tremendous circulation. Although the jury acquitted
the printer, Chief Justice Whitshed, who had, as Swift puts it, "so