I am with the greatest respect,
  (May it please your lordships and worships)
                  Your most dutiful
                        and obedient servant,
                                            M.B.

Aug. 25, 1724.

LETTER IV.

A LETTER TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.

NOTE

The country was now in a very fever of excitement.  Everywhere meetings were held for the purpose of expressing indignation against the imposition, and addresses from brewers, butchers, flying stationers, and townspeople generally, were sent in embodying the public protest against Wood and his coins.  Swift fed the flame by publishing songs and ballads well fitted for the street singers, and appealing to the understandings of those who he well knew would effectively carry his message to the very hearths of the poorest labourers.  Courtier and student, tradesman and freeman, thief and prostitute, beggar and loafer, all were alike carried by an indignation which launched them on a maelstrom of enthusiasm.  So general became the outcry that, in Coxe’s words, “the lords justices refused to issue the orders for the circulation of the coin....  People of all descriptions and parties flocked in crowds to the bankers to demand their money, and drew their notes with an express condition to be paid in gold and silver.  The publishers of the most treasonable pamphlets escaped with impunity, provided Wood and his patent were introduced into the work.  The grand juries could scarcely be induced to find any bill against such delinquents; no witnesses in the prosecution were safe in their persons; and no juries were inclined, or if inclined could venture, to find them guilty.”

In such a state of public feeling Swift assumed an entirely new attitude.  He promulgated his “Letter to the Whole People of Ireland”—­a letter which openly struck at the very root of the whole evil, and laid bare to the public eye the most secret spring of its righteous indignation.  It was not Wood nor his coins, it was the freedom of the people of Ireland and their just rights and privileges that were being fought for.  He wrote them the letter “to refresh and continue that spirit so seasonably raised among” them, and in order that they should plainly understand “that by the laws of God, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of your COUNTRY, you ARE, and OUGHT to be as FREE a people as your brethren in England.”  The King’s prerogative had been held threateningly over them.  What was the King’s prerogative? he asked in effect.  It was but the right he enjoyed within the bounds of the law as made by the people in parliament assembled.  The law limits him with his subjects.  Such prerogative he respected and would take up arms to protect against any who should rebel.  But “all government without the consent of the governed, is the very definition of slavery.”  The condition of the Irish nation was such that it was to be expected eleven armed men should overcome a single man in his shirt; but even if those in power exercise then power to cramp liberty, a man on the rack may still have “the liberty of roaring as loud as he thought fit.”  And the men on the rack roared to a tune that Walpole had never before heard.