Headnote

Composed February 1730; published posthumously, 1801; copy text 1801 (see Textual Account).

The award of the freedom of the city ofDublin and a gold box was a recognition of Swift's status as patriot and as a defender of the interests of Ireland in general, and the Dublin manufacturing classes in particular. It is also more implicitly connected to the heightened political animation of Dublin in 1729, particularly the increased conflict originating from the rise of a patriotic lobby (see above, Introduction, pp. lxxxvii–xciv).

On 16 January 1730, the corporation of Dublin voted to give Swift his freedom in a gold box, but on 13 February following, when the lord mayor and sheriffs were summoned to attend the privy council to answer questions concerning riots which had occurred in the city, they were harangued over this decision by Joshua, Viscount Allen. According to Marmaduke Coghill, Allen ‘wondered how they should complain of poverty, when they were so lavish as to give a gold box to a man who neither feared God nor honoured the king, who had wrote a libel on the king, queen and the government’ (Coghill to Edward Southwell, 21 Feb. 1729[/30] (Coghill Letters, pp. 91–2)). Allen's criticism brought forth this ‘Advertisement’ from Swift, though there is no evidence that it was ever published or otherwise distributed in Swift's lifetime, or that Swift intended it to be.

ADVERTISEMENT BY DR. SWIFT. IN HIS DEFENCE AGAINST JOSHUA, LORD ALLEN, FEB. 18, 1729.

“WHEREAS Dr. Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick's Dublin, hath been credibly informed, that on Friday the 13th of this instant February, a certain person did, in a publick place, and in the hearing of a great number, apply himself to the right honourable the lord mayor of this city, and some of his brethren, in the following reproachful manner: ‘My lord, you and your city can squander away the publick money, in giving a gold box to a fellow who has libelled the government!’ or words to that effect. Now, if the said words, or words to the like effect, were intended against him the said dean, and as a reflection on the right hon.