Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- List of Illustrations
- General Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Upon Giving Badges to the Poor
- Considerations About Maintaining the Poor
- A Short View of the State of Ireland
- An Answer to a Paper, Called A Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants, Tradesmen and Labourers of the Kingdom of Ireland
- The Intelligencer
- Intelligencer, No. 1
- Intelligencer, No. 3
- Intelligencer, No. 5
- Intelligencer, No. 7
- Intelligencer, No. 9
- Intelligencer, No. 19
- A Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, Concerning the Weavers
- An Answer to Several Letters from Unknown Persons
- An Answer to Several Letters Sent Me From Unknown Hands
- A Letter on M’culla’s Project About Halfpence, and a New One Proposed
- A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents, or Country; and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
- A Proposal That All the Ladies and Women of Ireland Should Appear Constantly in Irish Manufactures
- Maxims Controlled In Ireland
- Advertisement by Dr Swift, in His Defence Against Joshua, Lord Allen
- The Substance of What Was Said by the Dean of St Patrick’s to the Lord Mayor and Some of the Aldermen, When His Lordship Came to Present the Said Dean With His Freedom in a Gold-Box
- A Vindication of His Excellency the Lord Carteret, From the Charge Of Favouring None but Toryes, High-Churchmen and Jacobites
- The Answer to the Craftsman
- A Proposal for an Act of Parliament, to Pay Off the Debt of the Nation, Without Taxing the Subject
- An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the City of Dublin
- The Humble Petition of the Footmen in and About the City of Dublin
- Some Considerations Humbly Offered to the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, and Common Council of the Honourable City of Dublin, in the Choice of a Recorder
- Prefatory Letter to Mary Barber, Poems on Several Occasions
- Advice to the Free-Men of the City of Dublin in the Choice of a Member to Represent Them in Parliament
- Observations Occasioned by Reading a Paper, Entitled, The Case of the Woollen Manufacturers of Dublin, &c.
- A Letter on the Fishery
- The Rev. Dean Swift’s Reasons Against Lowering the Gold and Silver Coin
- A Proposal for Giving Badges to the Beggars in all the Parishes of Dublin
- Associated Materials
- Appendices
- General Textual Introduction and Textual Accounts of Individual Works
- Bibliography
- Index
A Letter on M’culla’s Project About Halfpence, and a New One Proposed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2021
- Frontmatter
- Content
- List of Illustrations
- General Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Upon Giving Badges to the Poor
- Considerations About Maintaining the Poor
- A Short View of the State of Ireland
- An Answer to a Paper, Called A Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants, Tradesmen and Labourers of the Kingdom of Ireland
- The Intelligencer
- Intelligencer, No. 1
- Intelligencer, No. 3
- Intelligencer, No. 5
- Intelligencer, No. 7
- Intelligencer, No. 9
- Intelligencer, No. 19
- A Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, Concerning the Weavers
- An Answer to Several Letters from Unknown Persons
- An Answer to Several Letters Sent Me From Unknown Hands
- A Letter on M’culla’s Project About Halfpence, and a New One Proposed
- A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents, or Country; and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
- A Proposal That All the Ladies and Women of Ireland Should Appear Constantly in Irish Manufactures
- Maxims Controlled In Ireland
- Advertisement by Dr Swift, in His Defence Against Joshua, Lord Allen
- The Substance of What Was Said by the Dean of St Patrick’s to the Lord Mayor and Some of the Aldermen, When His Lordship Came to Present the Said Dean With His Freedom in a Gold-Box
- A Vindication of His Excellency the Lord Carteret, From the Charge Of Favouring None but Toryes, High-Churchmen and Jacobites
- The Answer to the Craftsman
- A Proposal for an Act of Parliament, to Pay Off the Debt of the Nation, Without Taxing the Subject
- An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the City of Dublin
- The Humble Petition of the Footmen in and About the City of Dublin
- Some Considerations Humbly Offered to the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, and Common Council of the Honourable City of Dublin, in the Choice of a Recorder
- Prefatory Letter to Mary Barber, Poems on Several Occasions
- Advice to the Free-Men of the City of Dublin in the Choice of a Member to Represent Them in Parliament
- Observations Occasioned by Reading a Paper, Entitled, The Case of the Woollen Manufacturers of Dublin, &c.
- A Letter on the Fishery
- The Rev. Dean Swift’s Reasons Against Lowering the Gold and Silver Coin
- A Proposal for Giving Badges to the Beggars in all the Parishes of Dublin
- Associated Materials
- Appendices
- General Textual Introduction and Textual Accounts of Individual Works
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Headnote
Composed spring 1729; published posthumously, 1762; copy text SwJ 433 & 1765 (see Textual Account).
The Letter on M’culla was an unfinished response to James Maculla's attempt to reverse the scarcity of coins in his A New Scheme Proposed, to the People of Ireland (1728) and to his privately trying to gain Swift's approval for the project. The ongoing problem of Irish coinage was also tackled by Thomas Prior in 1730 (Observations on Coin in General. With some Proposals for Regulating the Value of Coin in Ireland). The general movement in economic thought at this time was towards an acceptance of paper currency (see James Kelly, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s’, ECI 6 (1991), 7–36; Patrick Kelly, ‘“Conclusions by no Means Calculated for the Circumstances and Condition of Ireland”: Swift, Berkeley and the Solution to Ireland's Economic Problems’, in Aileen Douglas et al. (eds.), Locating Swift: Essays from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998, pp. 47–59). Maculla was moving towards this principle, but his interim solution was the (unduly complicated) offering of promissory notes on copper; Swift (for whom the absence of an Irishmint was a prime concern) was anyway suspicious of the idea of paper currency and was unsympathetic towards the thinking behind such proposals. In the case ofMaculla, the impracticality of the scheme allowed him to dismiss such projects, and to indulge in some political arithmetic of his own.
Swift's objection to the workings of the scheme, and latent suspicion of the motives behind it meant that when Maculla's plan did not succeed, the need to finish and publish the pamphlet apparently passed, after its initial composition (usually placed in spring 1729). It was first published in 1762, by George Faulkner, and reprinted three years later by Deane Swift in a text with significant differences, complicated further by an extant partial manuscript.
ON M’CULLA's PROJECT
Sr,
You desire to know my opinion concerning Mr. M’cullas Project, of circulating notes stampd on copper, that shall pass for the value of halfpence and Pence.
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- Irish Political Writings after 1725A Modest Proposal and Other Works, pp. 128 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018