The following tract was taken by Sir Walter Scott “from a little miscellaneous 12mo volume of pamphlets, communicated by Mr. Hartsonge, relating chiefly to Irish affairs, the property at one time of Thomas Kingsbury, Esq., son of Dr. Kingsbury, who attended Swift in his last illness.”  The present editor came across a similar volume while on a visit of research in Dublin, among the collection of books which belonged to the late Sir W. Gilbert, and which were being catalogued for auction by the bookseller, Mr. O’Donoghue.  The little 12mo contained this tract which had, as Sir W. Scott points out, a portrait of Swift at the end, on the recto of the last leaf.

According to Sir W. Scott, the friend in Dublin to whom the letter is supposed to be addressed, was Sir Robert Walpole.  If Scott be correct, and there seems little reason to doubt his conjecture, the tract must have been written in the second half of the year 1726.  In the early part of that year Swift had an interview with Walpole.  Our knowledge of what transpired at that interview is obtained from Swift’s letter of April 28th, 1726, to Lord Peterborough; from Swift’s letter to Dr. Stopford of July 20th, 1726; from Pope’s letter to Swift of September 3rd, 1726; and from Swift’s letter to Lady Betty Germaine of January 8th, 1732/3.  From these letters we learn that Swift was really invited by Walpole to meet him.  Swift’s visit to England concerned itself mainly with the publication of “Gulliver’s Travels,” but Sir Henry Craik thinks that Swift had other thoughts.  “As regards politics,” says this biographer, “he was encouraged to hope that without loss either of honour or consistency, it was open to him to make terms with the new powers.  In the end, the result proved that he either over-estimated his own capacity of surrendering his independence, or under-estimated the terms that would be exacted.”  This remark would leave it open for a reader to conclude that Swift would, at a certain price, have been ready to join Walpole and his party.  But the letters referred to do not in the least warrant such a conclusion.  Swift’s thought was for Ireland, and had he been successful with Walpole in his pleading for Ireland’s cause that minister might have found an ally in Swift; but the price to be paid was not to the man.  From Swift’s letter to Peterborough we are at once introduced to Ireland’s case, and his point of view on this was so opposed to Walpole’s preconceived notions of how best to govern Ireland, as well as of his settled plans, that Swift found, as he put it, that Walpole “had conceived opinions ... which I could not reconcile to the notions I had of liberty.”  Not at all of his own liberty, but of that of the liberty of a nation; for, as he says (giving now the quotation in full):  “I had no other design in desiring to see Sir Robert Walpole, than to represent the affairs of Ireland to him in a true light, not only without any view to myself, but to any party