Writing to Sheridan, under date April 24th, 1736, in a letter written partly by herself and partly by Swift, Mrs. Whiteway, Swift’s housekeeper, refers to the occasion of this speech in the following words: 

“The Drapier went this day to the Tholsel[195] as a merchant, to sign a petition to the government against lowering the gold, where we hear he made a long speech, for which he will be reckoned a Jacobite.  God send hanging does not go round.” (Scott’s edition, vol. xviii., p. 470. 1824.)

The occasion for this agitation against the lowering of the gold arose thus.  Archbishop Boulter had, for a long time, been much concerned about the want of small silver in Ireland.  The subject seemed to weigh on him greatly, since he refers to it again and again in his correspondence with Carteret, Newcastle, Dorset, and Walpole.  On May 25th, 1736, he wrote to Walpole to inform him that the Lord Lieutenant had taken with him to England “an application from the government for lowering the gold made current here, by proclamation, and raising the foreign silver.”  Silver, being scarce, bankers and tradesmen were accustomed to charge a premium for the changing of gold, as much as sixpence and sevenpence in the pound sterling being obtained. (See Boulter’s “Letters,” vol. ii., p. 122.  Dublin, 1770.)

There was no question about the benefit of Boulter’s scheme in the minds of the two Houses of Commons and Lords:  Swift, however, opposed it vehemently, because he thought the advantage to be obtained by this lowering of the gold would accrue to the absentees.  In 1687 James had issued a proclamation by which an English shilling was made the equivalent of thirteen pence in Ireland, and an English guinea to twenty-four shillings.  Primate Boulter’s object (gained by the proclamation of the order on September 29th, 1737) was to reduce the value of the guinea from twenty-three shillings (at which it then stood) to L1 2s. 9d. Swift, thinks Monck Mason, considered the absentees would benefit by this “from the circumstances of the reserved rents, being expressed in the imaginary coin, called a pound, but actually paid in guineas, when the value of guineas was lowered, it required a proportionately greater number to make up a specific sum” ("History of St. Patrick’s,” p. 401, note c.)

Swift, as he wrote to Sheridan, “battled in vain with the duke and his clan.”  He thought it “just a kind of settlement upon England of L25,000 a year for ever; yet some of my friends,” he goes on to say, “differ from me, though all agree that the absentees will be just so much gainers.” (Letter of date May 22nd, 1737.)

In a note to Boulter’s letter to the Duke of Newcastle (September 29th, 1737) the editor of those letters (Ambrose Phillips) remarks:  “Such a spirit of opposition had been raised on this occasion by Dean Swift and the bankers, that it was thought proper to lodge at the Primate’s