[Footnote 13:  Scott and Hawkesworth print “your behaviour in the world.”  The above is the reading of the first edition. [T.  S.]]

  I am, Sir,
  Your Affectionate
  Friend and Servant
  A.B.

  January 9th.
  1719-20.

***** ***** ***** *****

SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENLARGING

THE POWER OF BISHOPS IN

LETTING OF LEASES.

NOTE.

The years between that which saw the publication of the “Drapier Letters,” and that which rang with the fame of “Gulliver’s Travels,” were busy fighting years for Swift.  Apart from his vigorous championship of the Test, and his war against the Dissenters, he espoused the cause of the inferior clergy of his own Church, as against the bishops.  The business of filling the vacant sees of Ireland had degenerated into what we should now call “jobbery”; and during the period of Sir Robert Walpole’s administration it was rarely that an Irishman was selected.  On any question, therefore, which affected the welfare of the lower clergy, it will at once be seen, that the Lords Spiritual, sitting in the Irish Upper House, would find little difficulty in coming to a solution.  That the solution should also be one which only increased the clergy’s difficulties, might be expected from a body which aimed chiefly at acquiring wealth and power for itself.

In the reign of Charles I. an act was passed, “prohibiting all bishops, and other ecclesiastical corporations, from setting their lands for above the term of twenty-one years:  the rent reserved to be half the real value of such lands at the time they were set.”  As Swift points out, about the time of the Reformation, a trade was carried on by the popish bishops, who felt that their terms of office would be short, and who, consequently, to get what benefit they could while in office, “made long leases and fee-farms of great part of their lands, reserving very inconsiderable rents, sometimes only a chiefry.”  It was owing to a continuance in this traffic by the bishops when they became Protestants, and to a recognition of the injustice of such alienation, that the legislature passed the act.  In 1723, however, an attempt was made for its repeal.  Swift was not the man to permit the bishops to have their way, if he could help it.  His opinion of Irish bishops is well known.  “No blame,” he said, “rested with the court for these appointments.  Excellent and moral men had been selected upon every occasion of vacancy, but it unfortunately happened, that as these worthy divines crossed Hounslow Heath, on their way to Ireland, to take possession of their bishoprics, they have been regularly robbed and murdered by the highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon their robes and patents, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their stead.”