[5] Sir Thomas Littleton (1647?-1710) was chosen Speaker of the English House of Commons by the junto in 1698.  Onslow, in a note to Burnet’s “History,” speaks of the good work he did as treasurer of the navy.  Macky describes him as “a stern-looked man, with a brown complexion, well shaped” (see “Characters").  At the time of Swift’s writing the above letter, Littleton was member for Portsmouth. [T.  S.]

[6] Viscount Molesworth, in his “Considerations for promoting the Agriculture of Ireland” (1723), pointed out, that even with the added expense of freight, it was cheaper to import corn from England, than to grow it in Ireland itself. [T.  S.]

[7] Mr. Lecky points out that in England, after the Revolution, the councils were directed by commercial influence.  At that time there was an important woollen industry in England which, it was feared, the growing Irish woollen manufactures would injure.  The English manufacturers petitioned for their total destruction, and the House of Lords, in response to the petition, represented to the King that “the growing manufacture of cloth in Ireland, both by the cheapness of all sorts of necessaries of life, and goodness of materials for making all manner of cloth, doth invite your subjects of England, with their families and servants, to leave their habitations to settle there, to the increase of the woollen manufacture in Ireland, which makes your loyal subjects in this kingdom very apprehensive that the further growth of it may greatly prejudice the said manufacture here.”  The Commons went further, and suggested the advisability of discouraging the industry by hindering the exportation of wool from Ireland to other countries and limiting it to England alone.  The Act of 10 and 11 Will.  III. c. 10, made the suggestion law and even prohibited entirely the exportation of Irish wool anywhere.  Thus, as Swift puts it, “the politic gentlemen of Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best land, for the feeding of sheep.”  See notes to later tracts in this volume on “Observations on the Woollen Manufactures” and “Letter on the Weavers.” [T.  S.]

[8] That Swift did not exaggerate may be gathered from the statute books, and, more immediately, from Hely Hutchinson’s “Commercial Restraints of Ireland” (1779), Arthur Dobbs’s “Trade and Improvement of Ireland,” Lecky’s “History of Ireland,” vols. i. and ii., and Monck Mason’s notes in his “History of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” p. 320 et seq. [T.  S.]

[9] Barnstaple was, at that time, the chief market in England for Irish wool. [T.  S.]

[10] In 1726, Swift presented some pieces of Irish manufactured silk to the Princess of Wales and to Mrs. Howard.  In sending the silk to Mrs. Howard he wrote also a letter in which he remarked:  “I beg you will not tell any parliament man from whence you had that plaid; otherwise, out of malice, they will make a law to cut off all our weavers’ fingers.” [T.  S.]