Politics, Parliament, Patriot Opinion, and the Irish National Debt in the Age of Jonathan Swift

McGrath, Charles Ivar

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-04309-4_3

Charles Ivar McGrath⁷

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the process by which the principal of the Irish national debt was increased fourfold in 1729–1730 and the evolution in Irish taxation policy which accompanied that occurrence. It also assesses wider attitudes at the time towards parliamentary taxation and a national debt and the proposal for increasing it and offers a detailed analysis of the political and parliamentary activities relating to the increase in the debt, including the adoption of the concept of direct appropriation of taxation for debt repayment, and the emergence of the idea for establishing a sinking fund. Such considerations also take into account the wider economic conditions of the time and their impact upon public and political opinion. Ultimately, the chapter highlights how the actions of the Irish Parliament in relation to taxation and the national debt in the late 1720s and early 1730s represented a key moment in the evolution of fiscal policy and structures in Ireland and the extent to which public or more specifically Patriot opinion and wider political and economic considerations impacted upon that process.

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Notes

1.
Charles Ivar McGrath, ‘“The Public Wealth is the Sinew, the Life, of Every Public Measure”: The Creation and Maintenance of a National Debt in Ireland, 1716–45’, in The Empire of Credit: The Financial Revolution in the British Atlantic World, 1688–1815, ed. Daniel Carey and Christopher Finlay (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011), 171–77; idem, ‘Securing the Hanoverian Succession in Ireland: Jacobites, Money and Men, 1714–16’, Parliamentary History 33, no. 1 (2014): 140–59.
2.
L. M. Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal (1729): Historical Context and Political Purpose’, in Ourselves Alone? Religion, Society and Politics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Essays Presented to S. J. Connolly, ed. D. W. Hayton and A. R. Holmes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 42–60.
3.
For Patriot politics at the time, see Patrick McNally, Parties, Patriots and Undertakers: Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 174–95.
4.
Alan Downie, ‘Gulliver’s Travels, the Contemporary Debate on the Financial Revolution, and the Bourgeois Public Sphere’, in Money, Power and Print: Interdisciplinary Studies on the Financial Revolution in the British Isles, ed. Charles Ivar McGrath and Chris Fauske (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 118–28.
5.
Jonathan Swift, A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture &c., in Jonathan Swift: Major Works, ed. Angus Ross and David Woolley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 400–405.
6.
Jonathan Swift, ‘Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland’, in The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Claude Rawson and Ian Higgins (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 242–43.
7.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, in Essential Writings, 395–96, 434–35; Downie, ‘Contemporary Debate’, 115–18.
8.
Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the State of Ireland, in Essential Writings, 289–93; Jonathan Swift and Thomas Sheridan: The Intelligencer, ed. James Woolley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 170, 176, 178; Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 53.
9.
Journals of the House of Lords of the Kingdom of Ireland (hereafter, LJI), 8 vols. (Dublin: William Sleater, 1779–1800), iii, 18; Intelligencer, 104.
10.
The Boulter Letters, ed. Kenneth Milne and Paddy McNally (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 223.
11.
LJI, iii, 19.
12.
Boulter Letters, 223. See also Letters of Marmaduke Coghill, 1722–1738, ed. David Hayton (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2005), 46.
13.
For the ‘sole right’ claim of 1692 and the 1695 compromise, see Charles Ivar McGrath, The Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Constitution: Government, Parliament and the Revenue, 1692–1714 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 73–117; idem, ‘English Ministers, Irish Politicians and the Making of a Parliamentary Settlement in Ireland, 1692–5’, English Historical Review 119, no. 482 (2004): 585–613.
14.
Intelligencer, 104, 111.
15.
Robert E. Burns, Irish Parliamentary Politics in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989–1990), 1:205–10.
16.
James Kelly, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland 6 (1991): 16–17; Burns, Parliamentary Politics, 1:208.
17.
D. W. Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 246–51.
18.
For Brodrick, Carter, and Vesey, see E. M. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament, 1692–1800: Commons, Constituencies and Statutes, 6 vols. (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2002), 3:270–72, 377–84; 6:468–69.
19.
Coghill Letters, 35. See also Boulter Letters, 142–44; Burns, Parliamentary Politics, 1:212–16.
20.
Isaac Manley to [——], 25 Feb. 1726, The National Archives (hereafter, TNA): SP 63/387/73. See also TNA: SP 63/387/50–51, 55–56, 59–60, 75, 77, 79–82, 130; Coghill Letters, British Library (hereafter, BL) Add. MS 21122, f. 29; Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (hereafter, CJI), 21 vols. (Dublin: House of Commons, 1796–1800), iii, 444–45.
21.
Boulter Letters, 145.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Baron Carteret to the Duke of Newcastle, 23 Dec. 1727, TNA: SP 63/389/123–24; CJI, iii, 490–91, 495.
24.
CJI, iii, 477, 489, and app., cccxxxvi.
25.
Burns, Parliamentary Politics, 1:230–33.
26.
The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. David Woolley, 4 vols. (Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main, 2003): 3:184.
27.
For the socio-economic circumstances in Ireland in the second half of the 1720s, see TNA: SP 63/390/113–14, 121, 173–77; SP 63/391/9, 33–34, 41, 73, 75, 77–79, 81–82; TNA: PC 2/90, pp. 401, 409, 418, 458–59; PC 2/91, p. 22; Coghill Letters, BL Add. MS 21122, ff. 61–65, 68; Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 51; Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 251–52; Burns, Parliamentary Politics, 1:233–44; Kelly, ‘Swift and the Irish Economy’, 16–36.
28.
Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 46, 50–51, 53.
29.
TNA: SP 63/391/43, 46, 53, 71–72. For Conolly see Patrick Walsh, The Making of the Protestant Ascendancy: The Life of William Conolly, 1662–1729 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010).
30.
CJI, iii, 579–80.
31.
Coghill Letters, 73; Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:494–95; 4:191–92; 5:274–75; 6:319–21.
32.
CJI, iii, 581–82.
33.
Carteret to Newcastle, 25 Sept. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/124.
34.
Coghill Letters, 73; Carteret to Newcastle, 27 Sept. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/136.
35.
Coghill Letters, 73. For Gore see Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 4:284–86.
36.
CJI, iii, 583; Coghill Letters, 74. See also TNA: SP 63/391/165–66.
37.
Coghill Letters, 74.
38.
[Thomas Prior], A List of the Absentees of Ireland, and the Yearly Value of their Estates and Incomes Spent Abroad: With Observations on the Present State and Condition of that Kingdom (Dublin: R. Gunne, 1729).
39.
Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 54.
40.
[Prior,] Absentees, 11–12, 22–23, 27–29, 32.
41.
Ibid., 23.
42.
Ibid., 32–33.
43.
Ibid., 36.
44.
CJI, iii, 584.
45.
Ibid., 585.
46.
Ibid., 587; TNA: SP 63/391/168.
47.
For a similar opposition victory in this respect in 1725, see Burns, Parliamentary Politics, 1:209.
48.
CJI, iii, 588–90.
49.
Coghill Letters, 74–75. For Cope, see Charles Ivar McGrath, ‘“The Grand Question debated”: Jonathan Swift, Army Barracks, Parliament and Money’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland 31 (2016): 128–29; Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:505–06.
50.
Boulter Letters, 291. For Boulter and the ‘English interest’ see Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 240–55; Patrick McNally, ‘Irish and English Interests: National Conflict within the Church of Ireland Episcopate in the Reign of George I’, Irish Historical Studies 29, no. 115 (1995): 310–13.
51.
Boulter Letters, 291.
52.
Carteret to Newcastle, 31 Oct. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/190–91. See also Coghill Letters, 75–76; Boulter Letters, 293.
53.
TNA: SP 63/391/200, 202.
54.
Boulter Letters, 293.
55.
Ibid.
56.
Coghill Letters, 76.
57.
CJI, iii, 594, and app., ccclxxvii–ccclxxxi.
58.
Coghill Letters, 76.
59.
Boulter Letters, 294.
60.
CJI, iii, 594–95.
61.
Coghill Letters, 77.
62.
CJI, iii, 595.
63.
Coghill Letters, 77.
64.
Ibid.
65.
See McGrath, Irish Constitution, chaps. 3–7.
66.
CJI, iii, 596–97.
67.
Coghill Letters, 78; Boulter Letters, 294–95.
68.
For the evolution of these key constitutional principles, see McGrath, Irish Constitution, chaps. 3–7.
69.
CJI, iii, 597–98.
70.
Coghill Letters, 78.
71.
CJI, iii, 597–98.
72.
Coghill Letters, 78.
73.
Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 54, 59–60.
74.
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, in Essential Writings, 300; Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 58; Kelly, ‘Swift and the Irish Economy’, 33.
75.
Sean Moore, Swift, the Book and the Irish Financial Revolution: Satire and Sovereignty in Colonial Ireland (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2010), 173, 184–85; idem, ‘Devouring Posterity: A Modest Proposal, Empire, and Ireland’s “Debt of the Nation”’, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 122, no. 3 (2007): 679–93. However, an implied caution in this regard seems to be suggested in Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 43–44.
76.
Jonathan Swift, ‘The Grand Question Debated: Whether Hamilton’s Bawn should be Turned into a Barracks or a Malt-House’, in Major Works, 501; McGrath, ‘Grand Question’, 123.
77.
Jonathan Swift, ‘Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D., Occasioned by Reading a Maxim in Rochefoucault’, in Major Works, 528–29; McGrath, ‘Grand Question’, 130–31.
78.
Moore, Swift, 185–86; idem, ‘Devouring Posterity’, 690–91; Cullen, ‘Swift’s Modest Proposal’, 54, 57.
79.
CJI, iii, 598–99.
80.
Ibid., 599–601.
81.
Carteret to Newcastle, 18 Nov. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/210–11.
82.
Boulter Letters, 295.
83.
Thomas Clutterbuck to Charles Delafaye, 20 Nov. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/236–37.
84.
Boulter Letters, 295.
85.
Charles Ivar McGrath, Ireland and Empire, 1692–1770 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 185–88.
86.
Carteret to Edward Southwell, 30 Nov. 1729, Philips Manuscripts, BL Add. MS 38016, ff. 9–10.
87.
Jonathan Swift: Irish Tracts, 1728–1733, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), xxi–xxii.
88.
Jonathan Swift, A Proposal that all the Ladies and Women of Ireland should Appear Constantly in Irish Manufactures, in Irish Tracts, 123.
89.
Ibid., 123–24.
90.
Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 3:645–46.
91.
Swift, Proposal that all the Ladies, 126.
92.
TNA: SP 63/391/234, 238–39.
93.
Privy Council Minutes, 25 Nov. 1729, 28–29 Nov. 1729, TNA: PC 2/91, pp. 86–87, 89–91.
94.
Privy Council Minutes, 1–2 Dec. 1729, TNA: PC 2/91, pp. 92–95; TNA: SP 63/391/246; The Statutes at Large Passed in the Parliaments held in Ireland (hereafter Stat. Ire.), 20 vols. (Dublin: George Grierson, 1786–1801), 5:337–40.
95.
McGrath, Irish Constitution, chaps. 3–7.
96.
Carteret to Southwell, 9 Dec. 1729, Philips Manuscripts, BL Add. MS 38016, ff. 11–16.
97.
Carteret to Charles, Viscount Townshend, 14 Dec. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/254.
98.
Clutterbuck to Delafaye, 14 Dec. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/260–61.
99.
Boulter Letters, 298–99.
100.
Newcastle to Carteret, 25 Dec. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/280.
101.
Ibid.
102.
McGrath, Ireland and Empire, 98–204.
103.
McGrath, ‘Securing the Hanoverian Succession’, 154–55.
104.
Delafaye to Clutterbuck, 27 Dec. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/286–87.
105.
Ibid.
106.
CJI, iii, 619–22; Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:179–80; 6:319–21.
107.
Coghill Letters, 79.
108.
Boulter Letters, 299.
109.
Coghill Letters, 79–80.
110.
Ibid. For the named MPs, see Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:89, 241–46, 377–81, 494–95, 505–06; 4:243–44, 248, 417–18; 5:96–97, 222–23, 424; 6:276–77, 443–44, 468–69. For further on Boyle’s party and the debate, see Coghill Letters, 81–2; Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 250–51, 254.
111.
CJI, iii, 619–23.
112.
Boulter Letters, 299.
113.
Coghill Letters, 83.
114.
Ibid., 79.
115.
Boulter Letters, 299.
116.
Coghill Letters, 80–81.
117.
Boulter Letters, 299.
118.
CJI, iii, 624–25.
119.
Coghill Letters, 82.
120.
Carteret to Newcastle, 22 Dec. 1729, TNA: SP 63/391/272; Carteret to Southwell, 26 Dec. 1729, Philips Manuscripts, BL Add. MS 38016, ff. 17–18.
121.
CJI, iii, 624–25.
122.
Carteret to Newcastle, 2 Jan. 1730, TNA: SP 63/392/3–4.
123.
Coghill Letters, 89.
124.
[Jonathan Swift,] A Libel on D[octor] D[elany] and a Certain Great Lord ([Dublin:] n.p., 1730). On Delany’s poem and Swift’s responses to it in general, see Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:646–50, 660–65.
125.
[Swift,] Libel, 9; Jonathan Swift: The Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1983), 407; Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:650.
126.
Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 3:306–7; Complete Poems, 807.
127.
A wallet or pouch; Complete Poems, 810.
128.
Strews.
129.
[Swift,] Libel, 12; Complete Poems, 409; Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:649.
130.
The proposed inscription, probably composed by Delany but with significant input and approval from Swift himself, was: ‘the lord Mayor, Sheriffs and Commons presented the freedom of this city in this box to Dr. Jon: Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, whom for his great zeal, unequalled abilities and distinguished munificence in asserting the rights and defending the liberties and encouraging the manufactures of the kingdom they justly esteemed the most eminent Patriot and greatest ornament of this his native city and country’; Coghill Letters, 92; Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:651.
131.
Coghill Letters, 91–92; Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:652–55.
132.
Coghill Letters, 91.
133.
Ehrenpreis, Swift, 3:653, 656–60.
134.
See Charles Ivar McGrath, ‘Banks, Paper Currency and the Fiscal State: The Case of Ireland, Stated, 1660–1783’, in The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660–c.1783, ed. Aaron Graham and Patrick Walsh (London: Routledge, 2016), 38–60.
135.
Agmondisham Vesey had prior involvement in schemes for provision of credit facilities in Ireland, having been a subscriber to the two main national bank projects in 1720–1721, as well as being a close friend of one of Ireland’s leading private bankers, Francis Harrison. See TNA: SP 63/375/152–53; National Library of Ireland MS 2256, pp. 39, 41, 67–69.
136.
For James Swift see Patrick Walsh, The South Sea Bubble and Ireland: Money, Banking and Investment, 1690–1721 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 50, 116, 133, 136.
137.
Coghill Letters, 96–97.
138.
Ibid; CJI, iii, 638; Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:448–49; 4:63.
139.
CJI, iii, 640, and app., cccxcvi–cccxcvii. The final total amount subscribed in ready money was £90,242 and in warrants £59,758; CJI, iv, app., v.
140.
Coghill Letters, 97; CJI, iii, 649.
141.
Coghill Letters, 97–98; CJI, iii, 649–52. For the named MPs, see Johnston-Liik, Irish Parliament, 3:224–25; 4:377; 5:8; 6:481–82.
142.
CJI, iii, 651–52.
143.
McGrath, Ireland and Empire, 185–89.
144.
[Jonathan Swift,] A Vindication of His Excellency the Lord Carteret, from the Charge of Favouring None but Tories, High-Church-men, and Jacobites, in Irish Tracts, 155–69; Coghill Letters, 98.
145.
[Swift,] Vindication, 162.
146.
Stat. Ire., 5:487–92.
147.
Robert Clayton to Charlotte Clayton, 2 Dec. 1730, Sundon Papers, BL Add. MS 20102, ff. 138–39.
148.
Duke of Dorset to Newcastle, 8 Oct. 1731, TNA: SP 63/394/93–94.
149.
CJI, iv, 22–25 and app., iii–v, xi–xiii.
150.
Robert Clayton to Charlotte Clayton, 9 Nov. 1731, Sundon Papers, BL Add. MS 20102, ff. 152–54.
151.
TNA: SP 63/394/129, 145; TNA: PC 2/91, pp. 485–86; CJI, iv, 27–28, 38–41, 43.
152.
Stat. Ire., 5:487–92; David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987), 102.
153.
Stat. Ire., 5:487–92.
154.
Robert Clayton to Charlotte Clayton, 2 Jan. 1732, Sundon Papers, BL Add. MS 20102, ff. 158–60.
155.
TNA: SP 63/394/141–42; Stat. Ire., 5:508–10; Robert Clayton to Charlotte Clayton, 2 Jan. 1732, Sundon Papers, BL Add. MS 20102, ff. 158–60.
156.
Swift, ‘Verses’, in Major Works, 528–29, 683.
157.
McGrath, ‘Public Wealth’, 192.
158.
Jonathan Swift, A Proposal for an Act of Parliament to Pay Off the Debt of the Nation, without Taxing the Subject, in Irish Tracts, 207; Moore, Swift, 195.
159.
McGrath, Ireland and Empire, 157–58.
160.
Reflections on the National Debt: With Reasons for the Reducing the Legal Interest; And against a Public Loan. With some Advice to the Electors of Members of Parliament ([Dublin:] n.p., 1731), 11–13.
161.
McGrath, Ireland and Empire, 188–95.

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Charles Ivar McGrath

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McGrath, C.I. (2019). Politics, Parliament, Patriot Opinion, and the Irish National Debt in the Age of Jonathan Swift. In: Kanter, D., Walsh, P. (eds) Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662–2016. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04309-4_3

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