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
Maxims Controlled In Ireland
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
Probably composed 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnote that forms part of this text was provided by the editor, Deane Swift.
Hints of the process behind this unfinished essay can be found in a manuscript in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (see Associated Materials I, pp. 324–7). Maxims is usually dated to 1729, not least because of its connection to Swift's other writings of the time (for speculations, see Ferguson, p. 148, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 575). Swift is listing a number of supposedly axiomatic statements concerning the economy, which are inapplicable in Ireland because of the problems of governance and constitution he had previously discussed in other Irish texts of this period. The contemporary idea of using the supposedly incontrovertible maxim as a way of making plain Ireland's anomalous plight can be seen in pamphlets such as Remarks on some Maxims, Peculiar to the Ancient, as well asModern Inhabitants of Ireland. With a Seasonable Hint to G Bn about the Woollen trade, Dublin, 1730, otherwise unconnected to Swift, and signed by ‘Hibernicus’, following the pseudonym adopted by James Arbuckle in his influential letters in the Dublin Journal.
MAXIMS CONTROLLED IN IRELAND.
The Truth of some Maxims in State and Government, examined with reference to Ireland.
There are certainMaxims of State, founded upon long observation and experience, drawn from the constant practice of the wisest nations, and from the very principles of government, nor ever controlled by any writer upon politics. Yet all these Maxims do necessarily presuppose a kingdom, or commonwealth, to have the same natural rights common to the rest of mankind who have entered into civil society. For, if we could conceive a nation where each of the inhabitants had but one eye, one leg, and one hand, it is plain that, before you could institute them into a republic, an allowance must be made for those material defects, wherein they differed from other mortals. Or, imagine a legislator forming a system for the government of Bedlam, and, proceeding upon the maxim that man is a sociable animal, should draw them out of their cells, and form them into corporations or general assemblies; the consequence might probably be, that they would fall foul on each other, or burn the house over their own heads.
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- Irish Political Writings after 1725A Modest Proposal and Other Works, pp. 171 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018