When ad hominem attacks are justified

Jonathan Swift's defence of liberty with personal invective

Some of Jonathan Swift’s best writing is his pamphlets. We think of the classic authors as poets, novelists, dramatists, and maybe essayists. But Swift excelled also at political invective, and he made it into a high art with broad appeal. When the Swift scholar Irvin Ehrenpreis was researching his four-volume biography of Swift in the Dublin library in the 1970s, a stack boy (book runner) asked what he was working on. Hearing the name Jonathan Swift the boy said: “ah yes, ‘burn everything English except their coal.’” Few writers can hope to be quoted off the cuff by a young school leaver like that some two hundred and fifty years after their work was published.

Swift’s most accomplished political writing is about Ireland. He was a reluctant Irishman, and declared himself to be English. But, he was stuck there, for various reasons, and he resented the subservient condition Ireland was forced into as an English colony. When the British government gave a patent to one William Wood to produce copper coinage, Swift was roused to his most fierce work. These coins were sub-standard, and would create an inflation for Ireland, and drive out the actually valuable gold and silver coinage. Since there was already a shortage of silver, this was an even more serious problem.

The arguments against this patent were mostly established before Swift joined the war of pen and ink that ensued. It was a significant moment in Irish history, with mass resistance planned and achieved. The coins were not legal tender, only gold and silver were, and so the people of Ireland were within their rights to reject the debased money. Under the influence of Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, and the logistical capacities of others, that is exactly what they did.

Although there were perfectly sound economic arguments against these coins, which were made by others, and although Swift uses those arguments, what makes the Drapier’s Letters ring with indignation and burn with an appeal to justice, are Swift’s ad hominem attacks. Swift spelled Wood’s name wrong, so little did he know of him; but it was no matter. Wood was the enemy on who Swift would focus all his opposition. Wood became the rhetorical focus around which the opposition to England could organise.

Part of Swift’s genius is his plain style. He wrote to be understood by everyone. There is a story that he had his work read out to servants and edited it until they could understand it all. But another, perhaps more important, part of his genius was his ability to pick his enemies, and then to pick them apart. Swift knew, in Ehrenpreis’s words, that we are roused more quickly to hate a man than an idea. The Drapier persona allows him to talk to ordinary people, and his plain style and ad hominem attacks allowed him to talk as one of them.

Throughout the Letters, Swift makes many points of principle. He always relies on the argument that the law does not oblige people to take the coins and that the king is unable to subvert the law. Posing as an ordinary Drapier (a cloth merchant) he is able to make this case more strongly, by writing in a humble manner. “I have heard very wise men say, that the king’s prerogative is bounded and limited by the good and welfare of his people.” That is from the third letter, specifically addressed to the nobility of Ireland, so the point has all the more satiric force. Even the Drapier knows the constitution better than these idle aristocrats!

But principle is not enough. So Swift constantly gets after Wood. He says Wood has discovered how to make alchemy work: “by debasing copper, and resolving to force it upon us for gold.” And he makes Wood the point of the rebellion, rather than England: “refuse this Filthy Trash; It is no Treason to Rebel against MR. WOODS.” When he says that such poor coins will quickly be counterfeited, he concludes: “And Mr. WOODS will never be at rest but coin on.”

In the second letter, Swift makes the argument about Gresham’s Law (that the low value coins will incentivises people to remove their actual gold and silver coins from circulation, because they will lose value: “Bad money chases out good”), but he anthropomorphizes it. This is no longer a faceless economic process. The invisible hand becomes the hand of “this little Impudent Hardware Man turning into ridicule the Direful Apprehensions of a whole Kingdom.” In this way, abstract economics becomes a David and Goliath story. For an elite like Swift to threaten to shoot Wood would be alarming; for a humble shop-keeper to do so, as if he were defending himself against an armed robber, is more relatable.

Today, this sort of ad hominem attack is supposed to be always wrong. We enjoy the platitudes that we must “play the ball not the man” and make a great virtue out of not “dunking” on people. Perhaps as a general rule this is the right way to conduct ourselves. It is undignified, mean spirited, and unintellectual to write like that. That’s not even the worst of it: Swift uses the sort of violent language that would keep the news channels and congressmen in outraged excitement for days.

Mr. Woods will OBLIGE me to rake Five-pence Half-penny of his Brass in every Payment. And I will Shoot Mr. Woods and his Deputies through the Head, like High-way Men or Housebreakers, if they dare to force one Farthing of their Coyn upon me in the Payment of an Hundred Pounds. It is no Loss of Honour to submit to the Lyon, but who, with the Figure of a Man, can think with Patience of being Devoured alive by a Rat.

And you thought modern political rhetoric was inflammatory. Can this be justified? Why do we account Swift a genius (at least those few people who still read Swift) when he is so fiercely wrong on a matter of principles?

The simple answer is that he thought of Ireland as being the slaves of England. Colonial subjection was devastating for Ireland. They were obliged to sell their fabrics only to England, which monopoly forced the prices lower, and they were restricted from trading freely. Edmund Burke, later in the century, argued against these impositions as well. In the third letter, Swift writes,

Were not the people of Ireland born as free as those of England? How have they forfeited their freedom? Is not their Parliament as fair a representative of the people as that of England? And hath not their Privy-council as great or a greater share in the administration of public affairs? Are they not subjects of the same King? Does not the same sun shine on them? And have they not the same God for their protector? Am I a freeman in England, and do I become a slave in six hours by crossing the Channel?

Anyone who has read Gulliver’s Travels will feel the importance of that final line. And indeed the Drapier’s Letters were written at the same time as Swift was composing Gulliver. Swift was trying to rouse the people of Ireland not only to prevent an inflation, but to regain their freedom from their colonial masters. At the start of the fourth letter, he writes:

Having already written three letters upon so disagreeable a subject as Mr. Wood and his halfpence; I conceived my task was at an end: But I find, that cordials must be frequently applied to weak constitutions, political as well as natural. A people long used to hardships, lose by degrees the very notions of liberty, they look upon themselves as creatures at mercy, and that all impositions laid on them by a stronger hand, are, in the phrase of the Report, legal and obligatory.

To win such a fight, the expression of abstract principles is not enough. The rousing cry of freedom sometimes needs to become the battle call to attack an individual, a group of rulers, or a nation. Baseless rudeness and personal belittlement was not Swift’s method. Instead he coupled the principle of freedom with the enemy of Wood, so that his most powerful writing comes from the confluence of high principle (the law is on our side) and low ad hominem (this man is no better than a highway robber).

If a highwayman meets you on the road, you give him your money to save your life; but God be thanked, Mr. Wood cannot touch a hair of your heads. You have all the laws of God and man on your side: when he or his accomplices offer you his dross, it is but saying no, and you are safe. If a madman should come into my shop with a handful of dirt raked out of the kennel, and offer it in payment for ten yards of stuff, I would pity, or laugh at him; or if his behaviour deserved it, kick him out of my doors. And if Mr. Wood comes to demand my gold and silver, or commodities for which I have paid my gold and silver, in exchange for his trash, can he deserve or expect better treatment?

Sometimes ad hominem attacks really are justified. There was a national boycott. The patent was removed. Swift’s writing was the central part of that effort. If Wood had to become the scapegoat, so be it. And bear in mind, Wood knew very well he was profiting from substandard coinage, and he lied to the Royal Mint about the quality of the coins. Wood really was, in some ways, the enemy of freedom.

And as Swift wrote in his own defence late in life, “Fair Liberty was all his cry”.

hero of liberty