The Woollen Act, Drapier, and A Modest Proposal: The Manufacturer-Proposer in Swift's (Anglo-)Irish Tracts

Abstract

Jonathan Swift's “Irish” tracts of the 1720s have been incorrectly dubbed so, for they represent the “Anglo-Irish” interests of the Protestant Ascendancy, distinct from and often opposed to those of the true “Irish.” Swift's own membership in the Protestant Ascendancy, by both parentage and profession, and concomitant agency in colonizing the Irish implicate him deeply in the very wrongs he ‘patriotically’ denounces as causes of Irish misery, and it results in the essentially dissociated nature of his Anglo-Irish satire. Such historical complicity corresponds with his dubious posing as various ‘manufacturer-proposers’ in almost all of his (major) tracts, whose self-serving motives show through the thin disguise of selfless patriotism. A most Swiftian use of this double complicity is found in The Drapier’s Letters, in which he puts up a Dublin draper to counter-propose against William Wood, the “archetypal” manufacturer-proposer of the copper half-pence scheme. The “Drapier” guise is in itself a carefully calculated move, based upon the parallel Swift draws between the rush of English manufacturers’ proposals that had led to the Woollen Act of 1699, the first full-scale trade restriction on Ireland, and Wood’s own proposals and lobby maneuverings. What often goes unnoticed about the Drapier is the fact that at th