A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720)

Abstract

This pamphlet represents Swift’s full emergence into political activism on the Irish stage after several years of relative silence following his return from England in 1714 to take up his post as Dean of St. Patrick’s. Directed mainly against the restrictions against Irish trade enforced by laws such as the Woollen Act of 1699, and boldly calling for a boycott of English goods to develop Ireland’s economic self-reliance, the tract’s appearance was deliberately timed to coincide with the celebrations in Dublin for the 60th birthday of King George I (on May 28, 1720) and aimed to tap into the widespread resentment throughout the country over the recently passed Declaratory Act, which emasculated the powers of the Irish Parliament by declaring Britain’s full authority to make laws Kto bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. An inflammatory passage in the pamphlet’s first printing (deleted in subsequent editions) provoked a government prosecution against its printer, Edward Waters, and made the main prosecutor, Chief Justice William Whitshed, a recurring target of Swift’s satiric vitriol from that moment onward.