FIRST FRUITS

I

THE FINAL years of the reign of William III were marked by increasing political activity both inside and outside Parliament. The Tory party enjoying a new surge of popularity grew more confident in harrying the Whig ministry until in January 1699 they actually succeeded in forcing through a Bill to reduce the standing army to a mere 7,000 men. The main Tory grievance, however, was William's practice of making large gifts of the Irish lands confiscated from Jacobite rebels to his personal friends, most of whom were foreigners. An official commission, demanded by the Tories, revealed that William Bentinck and Arnold van Keppel had both received estates of over 100,000 acres, and that the King's former mistress had been granted James II's personal estate, also of 100,000 acres.1 A vociferous campaign was mounted to oppose these gifts; impeachments were demanded and eventually the Whig grandees were forced to sell off the estates. This, though only a token victory, was greeted by bonfires and parades of the unruly Tory mobs through the streets of London.

Back in Dublin, Swift and Berkeley, both Whigs, kept an anxious watch on these developments. 'Our government sits very loose', Swift remarked to Jane Waring, 'and I believe will change in a few months.'2 In fact the commissions of all three Lords Justices were revoked within the month, and the administration of Ireland entrusted to a Tory Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Rochester. Having once tasted victory, the Tories were eager to retain the initiative, and renewed their clamour for impeachments, this time over the partition treaties which William had negotiated in 1698 and 1700 for the division of the Spanish empire. These treaties had been concluded without the knowledge or consent of Parliament, but solely on the advice of the 'four lords partitioners', Portland, Orford, Halifax, and Somers. When Swift arrived back in London in April, he found the capital buzzing with rumours that the four lords were to be impeached, and on the 16th the Commons urged the King to remove these men 'from your council and presence for ever'. Tory mobs were countered by Whig petitions in defence of the four lords, ostensibly sent in by loyal subjects up and down the country, but actually written by Defoe and his associates in back rooms in the City. Throughout May an energetic paper war was waged in which the Whigs began gradually to recover their nerve, as the Tory onslaught seemed to ebb away. When on 17 June the House of Lords solemnly assembled to hear the impeachment proceedings against Somers, the drama of the situation rapidly turned to farce as the Commons, his accusers, simply failed to attend. The Tories were forced to concede defeat.

The experience of so much political volatility had a profound effect on Swift, who was engaged in editing Temple's Miscellanea for the press. The Third Part of Temple's work begins with an essay 'On Popular Discontents' in which Temple traced all 'factions, seditions, convulsions and fatal revolutions' of state back to 'a certain restlessness of mind and thought, which seems universally and inseparably annexed to our very natures.3 Swift could hardly fail to draw comparisons between Temple's theories and the scenes which he witnessed in London, and he set out his own thoughts on these matters in his Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions . in Athens and Rome. Though largely composed during the summer, this work was not published until October, well after the impeachment proceedings had been dismissed. It is therefore less a defence of the Whig lords than a theoretical discussion of political discontents through the ages, though its starting point is Swift's conviction that 'the liberties of Athens and Rome' had been undermined by just such actions as had been recently proposed. The Discourse is an example of the popular genre of parallel history, which allowed political criticism to masquerade as historical analysis. However, Swift's historical framework is more than a camouflage for polemic. He offers his classical perspective as a corrective to the short views and narrow opinions of party strife, and begins by defining the balance of powers between the one, the few and the many which, he claims, exists within all societies. In English political terms these figures translate naturally into the king, the lords and the commons. Swift realizes his image of a balance by emphasizing the vital third element, the fulcrum which keeps the other two forces in equilibrium. Once such an equilibrium is destroyed, the result is tyranny. Much of the first section of the Discourse is devoted to proving that such tyranny need not be vested in a single dictator, but can equally well be exercised by the few-such as the thirty tyrants of Athens-or the many. In Carthage at the time of the second Punic war, he writes, 'some authors reckon the government to have been then among them a dominatio plebis'.4 Lacking the phrase 'dictatorship of the proletariat', Swift is in no doubt that such a dangerously democratic state could exist, and that it would be a fatal denial of the 'mixed government' which he believed was both natural and rational. It is noticeable that, although he claims to deal impartially with the balance of power, all the examples which Swift chooses from Roman history illustrate the dangers of such a dominatio plebis. 'The people are much more dextrous at pulling down, and setting up,' he complained, 'than at preserving what is fixed.' His fears of over-mighty patricians were evidently less acute. He agreed with Temple in identifying the restlessness of post-lapsarian Man as the root cause of political disorders. 'Endless and exorbitant are the desires of men,' he lamented. Like Temple he believed that innovations should always be resisted, and that when they could not be avoided 'large intervals of time must pass between every . innovation, enough to melt down, and make it of a piece with the constitution'. Now and again he descends from these philosophical heights to draw specific lessons from more recent events.

The orators of the people at Argos (whether you will style them in modern phrase, great Speakers in the House, or only in general, representatives of the people collective) stirred up the Commons against the Nobles; of whom 1600 were murdered at once; and at last, the Orators themselves, because they left off their accusations; or to speak intelligibly, because they withdrew their impeachments; having it seems, raised a spirit they were not able to lay. And this last circumstance, as cases have lately stood, may perhaps be worth noting.5

Towards the end of the Discourse Swift ventures the conclusion that popular disturbances characteristically occur 'when the state would, of itself, gladly be quiet'. It is an indication of the shallowness of Swift's political philosophy here and elsewhere that he can write of the state having a will 'of itself' quite separate from the will or interests of the one, the few, or the many. It was this belief which allowed him, as the Examiner, to present the 'national interest' as a unified and uncontroversial goal, and to denounce all opposition as factional and self-seeking. He added that he conceived it 'far below the dignity, both of human nature, and reason, to be engaged in any party'. According to this high-minded view, the party member sacrificed the basic human right of thinking for himself, and became as much of an automaton as an acolyte among the Aeolists, moved by the spirit within him. Swift reinforces the point with language that echoes A Tale of a Tub.

He hath neither thoughts, nor actions, nor talk, that he can call his own; but all conveyed to him by his leader, as wind is through an organ. The nourishment he receives hath been not only chewed, but digested, before it comes into his mouth.6

Looking back, in 1714, Swift claimed that it was shortly after this, in conversations with Lord Somers in 1702, that 'I first began to trouble myself with the difference between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations.'7 This is disingenuous bluster to gloss over the embarrassing fact of his support for the Whigs in the Discourse. What he remembers telling Somers of himself was this:

Having been long conversant with the Greek and Roman authors, and therefore a lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they called a Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon any other principle, to defend or submit to the revolution: But as to religion, I confessed myself to be an High-Churchman, and that I did not conceive how anyone, who wore the habit of a clergyman, could be otherwise.8

Swift saw no contradiction in being a Whig in politics and a Tory in religion. On the contrary, he saw it as a positive indication of his independence. But he goes further: he cannot conceive how anyone who is loyal to both Church and State can think other than he does. This belief, that his own position is the only one logically and loyally tenable, lies behind his presentation of the national interest as something rational, natural, and indivisible. He could never...