simply reporting or interpreting Stella's own account. It does not appear on what ground the date and the name of Ashe were assigned. Experience in biography does not tend to strengthen belief in such anecdotes. On the whole, though the evidence has weight, it can hardly be regarded as conclusive. The ceremony, in any case, made no difference to the habits of the parties. They lived apart, and Stella used her maiden name in her will.
Until he was over fifty Swift had not appeared as a patriot. He shared in an intensified form all the prejudices of the Irish churchman against dissenters, catholics, and jacobites. He was proud of being an Englishman, though he ‘happened to be dropped’ in Ireland (see letter to Grant, 23 March 1733–4, and Oxford, 14 June 1737). He could speak warmly of the natural intelligence of the native Irish (to Wogan, July 1732), but he considered them to be politically insignificant, and shows no desire for any change or for a relaxation of the penal laws. At this period, however, his prejudices were roused against the English government. The English colonists in Ireland were aggrieved by the restrictions upon Irish trade, and their oppressors were the hated whigs. Swift's eyes were opened, and his hatred of oppression was not the less genuine because first excited by his personal antipathies. The first symptom of his return to political warfare was the publication of a proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures in 1720. He declared that the oppression of Ireland was calculated to call down a judgment from heaven, and says that whoever travels in the country will hardly think himself ‘in a land where law, religion, and common humanity are professed.’ The printer of the pamphlet was prosecuted, and the chief justice, Whitsted, after sending the jury back nine times, only induced them, after eleven hours' struggle, to return a special verdict. The prosecution had to be dropped. In 1722 a patent was given to William Wood, an English tradesman, to provide a copper coinage, which was much wanted in Ireland. Wood was to pay 1,000l. a year to the crown for fourteen years, and the Duchess of Kendal, the king's mistress, sold the patent to Wood for 10,000l. It seems that Wood was allowed to make a good bargain in order to be able to pay these sums. The real grievance, however, was not so much that the Irish had to pay a high price for their copper coinage, as that they had to pay a high price for the benefit of Wood and the duchess without being in any way consulted as to the bargain. The Irish parliament presented a memorial against Wood, other bodies petitioned, and a committee of inquiry of the privy council met to consider the matter in April 1724. Swift hereupon published a pamphlet, signed ‘M. B. drapier,’ in his tersest style. He declared, with audacious exaggeration, that Wood's project would ruin the country, and prophesied the most extravagant results. The committee reported on 24 July 1724, defending the patent, but recommending that the amount to be coined should be reduced from 100,800l. to 40,000l. Before the report was published its general nature had transpired, and Swift published a second letter, dated 4 Aug., taking wider ground, and proposing a general agreement to refuse the money. A third letter followed the publication of the report on 25 Aug., and a fourth, the most powerful of all, appeared on 13 Oct. Swift now asserted the broad principle that Ireland depended upon England no more than England upon Ireland. Government without the consent of the governed, he said, is the ‘very definition of slavery,’ and, if Irishmen would not be slaves, the remedy was in their own hands.
Meanwhile Lord Carteret had been appointed lord lieutenant. Swift had written to him privately to protest against Wood's patent. Carteret [see under Carteret, John, Earl Granville, for his relations to Swift] had replied graciously. His post was a kind of exile due to Sir Robert Walpole's jealousy, and he was to be responsible for compromising the dispute. He reached Ireland on 22 Oct., and issued a proclamation on the 27th offering a reward of 300l. for a discovery of the authorship of the fourth letter. The printer, Harding, was prosecuted. Swift went to Carteret's levee and reproached him for attacking a poor tradesman (Sheridan, p. 215). The butler to whom Swift had dictated the letters having absented himself, Swift suspected him of presuming upon his knowledge of the secret, and at once dismissed him for his insolence (Deane Swift, p. 190; Sheridan, on his father's authority, p. 213). The butler did not inform, and when the storm was over Swift made him verger of the cathedral. Sir Henry Craik rejects the story on the ground that Swift's authorship was notorious. Legal evidence, however, might be important, and the printer's trial was proceeding. Swift, at any rate, wrote a letter admitting the authorship to the chancellor, Lord Middleton, who was opposed to the patent. It was first published in 1735, and it is not certain that it was sent (it is erroneously placed, in Scott's edition, after the letter to Molesworth). On 11 Nov. he printed a letter of ‘seasonable advice’ to
