Sir,—When I was compiling the ‘Statements and Soundbites’ section of A factbook of Irish history (Kindle/Amazon), I tried to establish the provenance of every quotation but in two instances I hit the proverbial brick wall.
Every student of Jonathan Swift will be familiar with his famous diatribe against the appointment of Englishmen to Irish sees:
‘No blame rested with the court for these appointments. Excellent and moral men have been selected upon every occasion of vacancy by the English prime minister but it unfortunately has uniformly happened that as these worthy divines crossed Hounslow Heath on their way to Ireland to take possession of their bishoprics, they have been regularly robbed and murdered by the highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize their robes and patents, come over to Ireland and are consecrated bishops in their stead.’
It isn’t included in the eight-volume Works of Jonathan Swift (1751). In 1814 Sir Walter Scott included it in the first volume of his Works of Jonathan Swift but without a reference, and it doesn’t appear in any of the other eighteen volumes. Temple Scott also included it in volume IV of his Prose works of Jonathan Swift (1900), but again without giving a source.
The second quotation that forced me to admit defeat was the reported warning in 1893 to William Gladstone by Col. Edward Saunderson, the colourful MP for North Armagh, that ‘This [Home Rule] Bill may pass this House but it will not pass the bridge at Portadown’. I couldn’t find it in Hansard but the journal did report him as saying on 13 February 1893 that ‘They may pass the Home Rule Bill but they had not the power to make the loyalists obey’. A trawl of the British and Irish Newspaper Collections in the National Library yielded nothing until 12 July 1985, when it appeared in the Belfast News-Letter without attribution. It was also included, again without attribution, by R. David Jones et al. in The Orange citadel (1996).
I would appreciate any information from your readers about either quotation.—Yours etc.,
DENIS FAHEY
81 Walnut Rise
D09 H2R6
dnsfahey88@gmail.com
086-3436635