As a reward for his great political services, Swift was appointed, on 23 April 1713, dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and the fol lowing June went to Ireland to take charge of his new office. Returning to London in August of the same year with a view to healing the growing breach between the Tory ministers, Oxford and Bolingbroke, he was unsuccessful and retired to Letcombe, Berkshire. On the fall of Oxford and the triumph of Bolingbroke, he adhered to the fortunes of the former and saw the close of his political career in England. On the death of Queen Anne, 1 Aug. 1714, the downfall of Bolingbroke and the complete triumph of the Whig party, he returned at once to Dublin, where he remained continuously for the next 12 years.
In Ireland he found himself very unpopu lar, and in his Church had trouble with his chapter and the archbishop, King. For the next six years he lived quietly, busying himself with his duties and writing only a few pieces, chiefly short letters of advice, articles on manners, etc. In 1716 he may have married Stella. The evi dence is conclusive neither way, but the prob ability is against the marriage. At all events, she continued to live near him till her death in 1728, an event which caused him profound sor row. Of the various, and occasionally heated, discussions that have arisen about this famous love story, the most sensible conclusion is that of Sir Leslie Stephen to the effect that the question is not practically important in deter mining the character and achievement of Swift.
In 1720 Swift again became active. For the next 18 or 20 years, until he could write no longer, his very voluminous production has three main aspects: that in behalf of the op pressed people in Ireland, both clergy and laity •, that for the doctrines and the establishment of the Anglican Church; and the miscellaneous hu morous and satirical writing, both in prose and verse, on which his popular literary fame largely rests. Beginning with a Proposal for the Um verSal Use of Irish Manufactures> (1720), he followed this with tracts on other subjects, and in 1724 began his most celebrated piece of po lemic writing, 'The Drapier's Letters.> These very powerful, effective, but not wholly fair pamphlets were occasioned by a patent which had been issued to one William Wood to coin i108,000 of copper for circulation as small coin in Ireland. Swift, in the first three letters, ad dressed the people of Ireland, under various classes, and with much skill in the selection of arguments suitable to each class, advising them to shun the coinage which the English govern ment was trying to foist upon the Irish public. Then, having prepared his ground, he launched forth, in the next three letters, against the gen eral right of the English to exploit and oppress the Irish. He closed the series with a letter, not published till 1735, "An Humble Address to both Houses of Parliament" in which he pow erfully reviewed the woes of Ireland and made proposals for remedying them. The letters caused great excitement: the printer was ar rested and a reward was offered by the govern ment for the apprehension of the writer; but they produced their effect and the coinage was refused. Swift became very popular, and his
position enabled him to pursue the subject of his last letter in many other tracts. The miser able condition of Ireland is the burden of his political song, in such able pieces as 'A Short View of Ireland' (1727), and 'Maxims Con trolled in Ireland> (1728). The most remark able of these minor pieces is the very extraor dinary piece of irony, 'A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ire land from being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for Making them Beneficial to the Public.' No more bitter or intense satire than this exists in literature: for 10 years Swift had been fighting oppression, and this is the highest pitch of his complainings. Nothing that he had previously touched on — the villainy of the landlords, the vanity and foppery of the women, the rigor of the English and the miserable state of the country in general—is left unexposed.
Swift's writings on religious subjects of this period are, on the whole, of less permanent in terest than those just considered. They belong to a rather later date, when his interest in the general economic condition of Ireland had spent itself after its most vehement outcry, 'A Modest Proposal.' These writings are on two main subjects, the economic oppression of the minor clergy in Ireland and the efforts of the various sects of dissenters to obtain greater civil rights. Of the former of these the able tract *On the Bill for the Clergy's Residing on Their Livings)) (1731-32), is representative. Specif ically it is an argument against the plan of the bishops to get more power by compelling the lower clergy to divide their livings and to erect houses thereon at the direction of the bishops. In general, it is an acute comparison between the condition of the clergy in Ireland and in England and an exposition of the wretched con dition of the former. It is said to have induced the commons to reject the bill after it had been passed by the lords. The same idea he ex pressed satirically, as was usually his practice, in 'An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen,' a piece .which deserves a place withVgarth's drawings of the idle and the industrious appren tices. Typical of the latter class is 'The Pres byterians' Plea of Merit' (1730 or 1733), in which he dismembered the claim of the dissent ers to meritorious services in the time of the Commonwealth and the Revolution. The same subject he treated in his ablest satirical manner in 'Reasons Humbly Offered to the Parliament of Ireland for Repealing the Sacramental Test' (1733), in which he purported to show that in all respects the Catholics were more deserving than the Dissenters and should, therefore, have religious freedom. In all the many tracts of this latter class, he argued in favor of the ac tual establishment of the Anglican Church.