Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/274

264 be content to live cheap in a worse country, rather than be at the charge of exchange and agencies; and perhaps of nonsolvencies in absence, if they let their lands too high.

This proposal will also multiply farmers, when the purchasers will have lands in their own power to give long and easy leases to industrious husbandmen.

I have allowed some bishopricks, of equal income, to be of more or less value to the purchaser, according as they are circumstanced. For instance, the lands of the primacy and some other sees, are let so low, that they hardly pay a fifth penny of the real value to the bishop; and there the fines are the greater. On the contrary, the sees of Meath and Clonfert, consisting, as I am told, much of tithes, those tithes are annually let to the tenants without any fines. So the see of Dublin is said to have many fee-farms, which pay no fines; and some leases for lives, which pay very little, and not so soon nor so duly.

I cannot but be confident, that their graces my lords the archbishops, and my lords the bishops, will heartily join in this proposal, out of gratitude to his late and present majesty, the best of kings, who have bestowed on them such high and opulent stations; as well as in pity to this country, which is now become their own; whereby they will be instrumental toward paying the nation's debts without impoverishing themselves; enrich a hundred gentlemen, as well as free them from dependency; and thus remove that envy, which is apt to fall upon their graces and lordships from considerable persons, whose birth and fortunes rather qualify them to be lords of manors, than