Headnote

Composed April 1730; published April 1730; copy text 1730a (see Textual Account).

Swift's friendship with John Carteret, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1724 to 1730, dated back to Queen Anne's reign, when the young Carteret had been a Hanoverian Tory. It was renewed when Carteret came over to Ireland as viceroy in 1725, and Swift was able to secure from him some small items of patronage for his friends. But in general terms, Carteret pursued a political course in Ireland which involved the maintenance of local Whig interests in power; in 1730, he had ended his last parliamentary session in Ireland on a popular note.

Swift's ostensible and unnecessary defence of Carteret from the charge that he only gave advancement to Tories and Jacobites was also an opportunity to attack several enemies (Joshua Allen and Richard Tighe, appearing as Traulus and Pistorides, respectively, and unidentified in Irish editions of Swift during his lifetime) aligned to the Whig interest. Swift's pamphlet is more an attack on Whig paranoia (either real or affected) about Tory advancement under Carteret: the latter had been a Tory, and there had been a temporary recrudescence of the Tory interest in some boroughs after his arrival in 1725. By 1730, such charges were obviously unreasonable.

The pamphlet is internally dated by Swift's reference to the time of writing as 13 April 1730 (below, p. 214), and was published to coincide with the proroguing of Parliament on 15 April (see Woolley, Corr., vol. III, p. 310 fn. 9, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 658).

A VINDICATION OF HIS EX – -Y THE LORD C—, &c

In order to Treat this important Subject with the greatest Fairness and Impartiality, perhaps it may be convenient to give some Account of his E——, in whose Life and Character there are certain Particulars, which might give a very just Suspicion of some Truth in the Accusation he lyes under.

He is descended from two Noble, Antient, and most loyal Families, the Carterets and the Granvilles.