Drapier's Letters is the collective name for a series of seven pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 by Jonathan Swift to arouse public opinion in Ireland against the imposition of a privately minted copper coinage which Swift believed to be of inferior quality. William Wood was granted a letters patent to mint the coin, and Swift saw the licensing of the patent as corrupt. In response, Swift represented Ireland as constitutionally and financially independent in the Drapier's Letters. Since the subject was politically sensitive, Swift wrote under the pseudonym M. B. Drapier to hide from retaliation. Although the letters were condemned by the Irish government, with prompting from the British government, they were still able to inspire popular sentiment against Wood and his patent. The popular sentiment turned into a nationwide boycott, which forced the patent to be withdrawn; Swift was later honoured for this service to the people of Ireland. The first complete collection of the Drapier's Letters appeared in the 1735 George Faulkner edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift along with an allegorical frontispiece offering praise and thanks from the Irish people. Today, the Drapier's Letters are an important part of Swift's political writings, along with Gulliver's Travels (1726), A Tale of a Tub (1704), and A Modest Proposal (1729).
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1782:
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a leading British Whig Party statesman, began his second non-consecutive term as Prime Minister of Great Britain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Watson-Wentworth%2C_2nd_Marquess_of_Rockingham
1958:
Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union following the death of Joseph Stalin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev
1975:
Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, an oil pipeline spanning the breadth of the U.S. state of Alaska, began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System
1981:
The Solidarity movement in Poland staged a warning strike, the biggest strike in the history of the Eastern Bloc, in which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs for four hours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_warning_strike_in_Poland
2009:
The dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang District, Indonesia, failed, releasing floods that killed at least 100 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situ_Gintung
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
bilious (adj): 1. Suffering from real or supposed liver disorder. 2. Of or pertaining to something containing or consisting of bile. 3. Irritable or bad tempered; irascible http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bilious
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. --Karl Mannheim http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim