Headnote

Composed March 1728 (dated 25 March); published March 1728; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

This is a product of the reaction to A Short View of the State of Ireland; after its publication in March 1728, Swift received a short pamphlet, To the R—d Dr. J—n S—t, The Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants, Tradesmen, and Labourers of the Kingdom of Ireland (see Appendix A, below), usually attributed to John Browne. The Answer to a Paper, Swift's refutation of the pamphlet's assertions, is dated less than a week after the publication of A Short View, and it was published quickly, appearing in Dublin only a few days later (see Ferguson, pp. 151–2).

The related rising price of corn after two bad harvests, complaints ofmonopolies and profiteering, and the issue of whether Ireland could feed itself, led to Swift recommending (as other writers were to do, and Parliament was to pick up on during the following session) the need to increase the amount of land in Ireland under tillage.

In the parliamentary session of 1727–8, two bills were brought forward to promote tillage: the first was rejected by the British privy council; the second eventually received the royal assent as I Geo. II c. 10 inMay 1728. The tillage bill was part of a broader concern with regulating the market in corn. A separate Act was passed for regulating the assize of bread, enacted 1728 (I Geo. II c. 16). The tillage bill was much solicited by Archbishop Boulter (see his letter to Newcastle, 24 Feb. 1727[/8] Boulter Letters, vol. I, p. 177)). Swift also comments on the monopolising of land by graziers to the detriment of the ordinary cottier and labourer. The context of this particular agricultural problem begins with the passage by the Irish Parliament in 1704 of an Act (II Anne c. 15) to prevent butchers becoming graziers, in an attempt to halt the process by which land in certain parts of Ireland was increasingly being let to large-scale graziers.