This Chief Justice Whitshed was the same who acted as judge on Harding's trial for printing the fourth Drapier letter. Swift never forgot him, and took several occasions to satirize him bitterly.
The text of the present edition is based on the Dublin edition of 1720 and collated with the texts of Faulkner, 1735, and Miscellanies of same date.
_Dublin_: Printed and Sold by _E. Waters_, in _Essex-street_, at the Corner of _Sycamore-Alley_, 1720.
A PROPOSAL FOR THE UNIVERSAL USE OF IRISH MANUFACTURE, IN CLOTHES AND FURNITURE OF HOUSES, &c.
UTTERLY REJECTING AND RENOUNCING EVERY THING WEARABLE THAT COMES FROM ENGLAND.
It is the peculiar felicity and prudence of the people in this kingdom, that whatever commodities or productions lie under the greatest discouragements from England, those are what we are sure to be most industrious in cultivating and spreading. Agriculture, which hath been the principal care of all wise nations, and for the encouragement whereof there are so many statute laws in England, we countenance so well, that the landlords are everywhere by penal clauses absolutely prohibiting their tenants from ploughing; not satisfied to confine them within certain limitations, as it is the practice of the English; one effect of which is already seen in the prodigious dearness of corn, and the importation of it from London, as the cheaper market:[6] And because people are the riches of a country, and that our neighbours have done, and are doing all that in them lie, to make our wool a drug to us, and a monopoly to them; therefore the politic gentlemen of Ireland have depopulated vast tracts of the best land, for the feeding of sheep.[7]
I could fill a volume as large as the history of the Wise Men of Gotham with a catalogue only of some wonderful laws and customs we have observed within thirty years past.[8] 'Tis true indeed, our beneficial traffic of wool with France, hath been our only support for several years past, furnishing us all the little money we have to pay our rents and go to market. But our merchants assure me, "This trade hath received a great damp by the present fluctuating condition of the coin in France; and that most of their wine is paid for in specie, without carrying thither any commodity from hence."