"Lors il entend, en ce lieu sombre, Eneid travest. &. But if I had leisure to dwell on the melancholy subject, I could a tale unfold that would startle the Legislature, and perhaps arouse the Irish secretary to examine into an evil crying aloud for redress and suppression. Had my persecutor, the hard-hearted coppersmith, Woods, had any notion of the sufferings he entailed on Swift's luckless infant, he would never have exposed me as an enfant trouvé ; he would have been satisfied with plunging my father into a madhouse, without handing over his child to the mercies of a foundling hospital. Could he but hear my woful story, I would engage to draw "copper" tears down the villain's cheek. Darkness and mystery have for the last half century hung over this establishment; and although certain returns have been moved for in the House of Commons, the public knows as little as ever about the fifteen hundred young foundlings that there nestle until supplanted, as death collects them under his wings, by a fresh supply of victims offered to the Moloch of eudo-philanthropy. Horace tells us, that certain proceedings are best not exhibited to the general gaze "Nec natos coram populo Medea trucidet." Such would appear to be the policy of these institutions, the only provision which the Legislature has made for Irish pauperism. Some steps, however, have been taken latterly by Government; and from a paper laid before Parliament last month (May 1830), it appears that, in consequence of the act of 1822, the annual admissions in Dublin have fallen from 2000 to 400. But who will restore to society the myriads whom the system has butchered? who will recall the slain ? When the flower of Roman chivalry, under improvident guidance, fell in the German forests, "Varus, give back my legions!" was the frantic cry wrung from the bitterness of patriotic sorrow. My illustrious father has written, among other bitter sarcasms on the cruel conduct of Government towards the Irish poor, a treatise, which was printed in 1729, and which he entitled "A Modest Proposal for preventing Poor Chil dren from being a Burden to their Parents." He recommends, in sober sadness, that they should be made into salt provisions for the navy, the colonies, and for exportation; or eaten fresh and spitted, like roasting-pigs, by the alder men of Cork and Dublin, at their civic banquets. A quotation from that powerful pamphlet may not be unacceptable here: "Infant's flesh (quoth the Dean) will be in season through. out the year, but more plentifully in March, or a little before; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season. Therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants is at least three to one in the kingdom; and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of Papists amongst us." These lines were clearly penned in the very gail and bit terness of his soul; and while the Irish peasant is still considered by the miscreant landlords of the country as less worthy of his food than the beasts of the field, and less entitled to a legal support in the land that bore him; while the selfish demagogue of the island joins in the common hostility to the claims of that pauper who makes a stockpurse for him out of the scrapings of want and penury; the proposal of Swift should be reprinted, and a copy sent to every callous and shallow-pated disciple of modern political economy. Poor-laws, forsooth, they cannot reconcile to their clear-sighted views of Irish legislation; fever hospitals and gaols they admire; grammar-schools they will advocate, where half-starved urchins may drink the physic of the soul, and forget the cravings of hunger; and they will provide in the two great foundling hospitals a receptacle for troublesome infants, who, in those "white-washed sepul chres," soon cease to be a burden on the community. Th great agitator, meantime (God wot!) will bring in a bill " for a grand national cemetery in Dublin :* such is the pro vision he deigns to seek for his starving fellow-countrymen! "The great have still some favour in reserveThey help to bury whom they help to starve." The Dublin Hospital being supported out of the consolidated fund, has, by the argumentum ad crumenam, at last attracted the suspicions of government, and is placed under a course of gradual reduction; but the Cork nursery is upheld by a compulsory local tax on coal, amounting to the incredible sum of £6000 a-year, and levied on the unfortunate Corkonians for the support of children brought into their city from Wales, Connaught, and the four winds of heaven! Three hundred bantlings are thus annually saddled on the beautiful city, with a never-failing succession of continuous supply: are “Miranturque novas frondes, et non sua poma!” By the Irish act of Parliament, these young settlers entitled, on coming of age (which few do), to claim as a right the freedom of that ancient and loyal corporation; so that, although of the great bulk of them it may be said that we had " no hand in their birth," they have the benefit of their coming-"a place in the commonwealth” (ita Shakespeare). My sagacious father used to exhort his countrymen to burn every article that came from England, except coals; and in 1729 he addressed to the "Dublin Weekly Journal" a series of letters on the use of Irish couls exclusively. But it strikes me that, as confessedly we cannot do without the English article in the present state of trade and manufactures, the most mischievous tax that any Irish seaport could be visited with, would be a tonnage on so vital a commodity to the productive interests of the community. Were this vile impost withdrawn from Cork, every class of manufacture would hail the boon; the iron foundry would supply us at home with what is now brought across the Channel; the glassblower's furnace would glow with inextinguishable fires; the steam engine, that giant power, as yet so feebly * Historical fact. Vide parl. proceedings.-O. Y. |