law.  In addition to this he committed and arranged his arguments to writing, and issued them in the following pamphlet.  The activity against the bill proved so efficacious that the House of Commons dropped it.  It may be remarked that Swift’s interference was purely disinterested, since no part of the revenue of St. Patrick’s, as Monck Mason points out, comes from the “district appropriated to the culture of flax;” nor did Swift, “or any of his predecessors or successors, ever receive one shilling upon account of that tithe.”

This attempt on the part of the House of Commons to regulate the affairs of the clergy of Ireland seems to have been one of a series which divided laity and clergy into two strongly opposing parties.  On the one side were the House of Commons and its supporters, on the other the general body of the Irish clergy, with, for a time, at any rate, Swift at the head.  The tithe of pasturage, or, as it was called, the tithe of agistment, was being strongly resisted at the time, and many of the clergy were forced to sue in court before they could obtain it.  The matter of this tithe had been already before an Irish court in 1707, and had been settled in favour of the suing clergyman, one Archdeacon Neal; and although the cause was removed to King’s Bench in England, the previous judgment was confirmed.  In spite of this decision, however, the tithe continued to be a subject of litigation, and the landed proprietors even formed themselves into associations for the purpose of resisting the clergy’s claim.  In 1734 the House of Commons aggravated matters by passing resolutions against the claims, many of which were then the subject of legal actions, and prevented decisions being come to while it had the matter under its consideration.  From the pamphlets written at the time it may easily be seen that this interference on the part of the lower House was both unseemly and unjust.  Its conduct so roused Swift that his indignation found expression in one of his bitterest and most terrible poetical satires—­“The Legion Club”—­a satire so bitter and so scathing that reading it now, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, one shudders at its invective—­“a blasting flood of filth and vitriol, out of some hellish fountain,” Mr. Churton Collins calls it.  We are told that its composition brought on a violent attack of vertigo, and it remained unfinished.

The text here given is that of the first edition collated with those given by Faulkner, Hawkesworth, and Scott.

[T.S.]

  SOME
  REASONS
  AGAINST THE
  Bill for settling the Tyth of Hemp, Flax, &c. by a Modus.

MDCCXXIV.

The Clergy did little expect to have any cause of complaint against the present House of Commons; who in the last sessions, were pleased to throw out a Bill[1] sent them from the Lords, which that reverend body apprehended would be very injurious to them, if it passed into a law; and who, in the present sessions, defeated the arts and endeavours of schismatics to repeal the Sacramental Test.