Let me put another case.  Suppose a gentleman’s estate of two hundred pounds a year should sink to one hundred, by some accident, whether by an earthquake, or inundation, it matters not:  and suppose the said gentleman utterly hopeless and unqualified ever to retrieve the loss; how is he otherwise to proceed in his future economy, than by reducing it on every article to one half less, unless he will be content to fly his country, or rot in jail?  This is a representation of Ireland’s condition; only with one fault, that it is a little too favourable.  Neither am I able to propose a full remedy for this, that shall ever be granted, but only a small prolongation of life, until God shall miraculously dispose the hearts of our neighbours, our kinsmen, our fellow-protestants, fellow-subjects, and fellow rational creatures, to permit us to starve without running further in debt.  I am informed that our national debt (and God knows how we wretches came by that fashionable thing a national debt) is about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds; which is at least one-third of the whole kingdom’s rents, after our absentees and other foreign drains are paid, and about fifty thousand pounds more than all the cash.

It seems there are several schemes for raising a fund to pay the interest of this formidable sum (not the principal, for this is allowed impossible).  The necessity of raising such a fund, is strongly and regularly pleaded, from the late deficiencies in the duties and customs.  And is it the fault of Ireland that these funds are deficient?  If they depend on trade, can it possibly be otherwise, while we have neither liberty to trade, nor money to trade with; neither hands to work, nor business to employ them, if we had?  Our diseases are visible enough both in their causes and effects; and the cures are well known, but impossible to be applied.

If my steward comes and tells me, that my rents are sunk so low, that they are very little more than sufficient to pay my servants their wages; have I any other course left than to cashier four in six of my rascally footmen, and a number of other varlets in my family, of whose insolence the whole neighbourhood complains?  And I should think it extremely severe in any law, to force me to maintain a household of fifty servants, and fix their wages, before I had offered my rent-roll upon oath to the legislators.

To return from digressing:  I am told one scheme for raising a fund to pay the interest of our national debt, is, by a further duty of forty shillings a tun upon wine.  Some gentlemen would carry this matter much further, by raising it to twelve pounds; which, in a manner, would amount to a prohibition:  thus weakly arguing from the practice of England.

I have often taken notice, both in print and in discourse, that there is no topic so fallacious, either in talk or in writing, as to argue how we ought to act in Ireland, from the example of England, Holland, France, or any other country, whose inhabitants are allowed the common rights and liberties of humankind.  I could undertake to name six or seven of the most uncontrolled maxims in government, which are utterly false in this kingdom.