Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/365

Rh parts of the globe. And I am convinced, that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what came directly from thence.

The prime cost of wine yearly imported to Ireland, is valued at thirty thousand pounds; and the tea (including coffee and chocolate) at five times that sum. The lace, silks, calicoes, and all other unnecessary ornaments for women in eluding English cloths and stuffs, added to the former articles, make up (to compute grossly) about four hundred thousand pounds.

Now if we should allow the thirty thousand pounds wherein the women have their share, and which is all we have to comfort us, and deduct seventy thousand pounds more for overreaching, there would still remain three hundred thousand pounds annually spent, for unwholesome drugs and unnecessary finery: which prodigious sum would be wholly saved, and many thousands of our miserable shopkeepers and manufacturers comfortably supported.

Let speculative people busy their brains as much as they please, there is no other way to prevent this kingdom from sinking for ever, than by utterly renouncing all foreign dress and luxury.

It is absolutely so in fact, that every husband of any fortune in the kingdom, is nourishing a poisonous devouring serpent in his bosom, with all the mischief, but with none of its wisdom.

If all the women were clad with the growth of their own country, they might still vie with each other in the course of foppery; and still have room left to vie with each other, and equally show their wit and judgment, in deciding upon the variety of Irish stuffs. And if they could be contented with Rh