Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/216

206 riches of Ireland, which is not a logical demonstration of its poverty. The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars. The lowness of interest, in all other countries a sign of wealth, is in us a proof of misery; there being no trade to employ any borrower. Hence alone comes the dearness of land, since the savers have no other way to lay out their money: hence the dearness of necessaries for life: because the tenants cannot afford to pay such extravagant rates for land (which they must take or go a begging) without raising the price of cattle, and of corn, although themselves should live upon chaff. Hence our increase of buildings in this city; because workmen have nothing to do but to employ one another, and one half of them are infallibly undone. Hence the daily increase of bankers, who may be a necessary evil in a trading country, but so ruinous in ours; who, for their private advantage, have sent away all our silver, and one third of our gold; so that within three years past the running cash of the nation, which was about five hundred thousand pounds, is now less than two, and must daily diminish, unless we have liberty to coin, as well as that important kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the meanest principality in the German empire, as I before observed.

I have sometimes thought, that this paradox of the kingdom's growing rich, is chiefly owing to those worthy gentlemen the BANKERS; who except some customhouse officers, birds of passage, oppressive thrifty squires, and a few others who shall be