1John Rawls (1997) claims that a political society “has a way of formulating its plans, of putting its ends in an order of priority, and of making its decisions accordingly” (93). Public reason is the means by which this process is accomplished. Additionally, he says that, a society’s “ability to do these things is also its reason, though in a different sense: it is an intellectual and moral power, rooted in the capacities of its human members” (ibid.). But what happens when the political process in a democracy is superseded in some way, such that the direct form of public reason through the political action of its citizens and representatives is disrupted? How does public reason assert itself when the standard channels for doing so are temporarily disconnected or disjointed? Can Rawls’ concepts still apply in such a case, or does it apply only to politically liberal communities? What I wish to explore in this paper is the emergence of public reason in non-political form in eighteenth-century Ireland in the activities of the Dublin Society.
- 1 The title of the present article is drawn from this passage.
2Founded in 1731, the Society’s stated purpose was to promote the economic development of the country through improvement in “husbandry, manufacturing, and the useful arts,” according to the first issue of its Weekly Observations (1736-1737, 1). The Society’s goals were to be accomplished through several means such as grant-sponsored research, contests, widely disseminated publication, experimentation, and education, all of which had input from the general public. Despite its name, the Society’s impact reached beyond Dublin through a variety of projects, publications, and competitions. The Observations issued “an invitation to all persons, who truly love their country” to share their own best practices with the Society for dissemination (1736-1737, 8).1 Similarly, the Society’s subsequent competitions and sponsored projects enjoined the participation of all segments of Irish society to generate improvement for all of the economy.
3Although acknowledged as “the most successful instrument of social and economic reform in Ireland in eighteenth century” (Maxwell, 1949, 201), and “the only national forum for the promotion of enlightened agricultural practice” (Dickson, 2005, 172), analyses of the Society’s work are lacking in the economics literature. Such could be said of the study of eighteenth-century Irish economic thought overall, but the lack of coverage has started to be rectified for major figures like George Berkeley and Jonathan Swift. Berkeley’s monetary theory and philosophy are explored in Caffentzis (2000; 2003) and Johnston (1940; 1953). More recently Swift’s economic thought has been analyzed in both his satirical work in Prendergast (2015), and his non-satirical economic pamphlets in Ramos (2017). The economics literature on the Dublin Society remains relatively thin. A History of Irish Economic Thought (Boylan et al., 2011) mentions the Society but does not dedicate an individual chapter to their work. Beyond Salim Rashid’s (1988) contribution as part of his broader discussion of the Irish School as a whole, most of the work on the Society has come from history and literature, such as in the works of Patrick Kelly (2003), James Livesey (2004; 2012), and Gordon Rees (2014), rather than economics. Due to its concerns and stated aims, the work and writing of the Society is an overlooked chapter of eighteenth-century economic thought that deserves further attention. This paper is one attempt to do so but focuses on only one aspect of the Society: its interaction with the Irish public to generate economic improvement, and how this can be viewed as a form of public reason.
4The eighteenth-century Irish economy faced various obstacles. Besides cycles of crop failure, the economy faced restrictions on its exports due to English trade law, which suppressed local manufacturing. Although Ireland had its own Parliament and was not officially a colony of Great Britain, its economic decision-making power was constrained by the UK Parliament, which had oversight over Irish decisions to ensure that the Irish would not pass legislation that the British might perceive to be hurtful to their economic interests. Further, the disenfranchisement of most dissenters from the Church of Ireland, Catholics, and the native Irish meant that any public reasoning that took place between the parliament and the people was necessarily limited. Rawls discusses public reason in terms of the political, but he acknowledges that it does not only take place in the political realm. I argue that the Dublin Society, in the absence of the Irish government’s will or capability, engaged in a form of public reason in an attempt to accomplish in the economic realm what seemed impossible in the political realm: the improvement of the Irish economy. The Society’s publications and meetings became a locus of discourse on the Irish economy where needs and concerns could be expressed and Irish solutions to them could be generated and disseminated without interference from Westminster. The Society initiated public reason on economic matters through its invitation for public input to its publications and meetings, and sponsoring of public competitions to discover best practices in a variety of fields. Through their work and public engagement, the Society thus undertook activities concerning economic growth and development that under freer political circumstances the government would perform.
5Section one provides the political and economic context of eighteenth-century Ireland in which the Society formed. In section two, the activities of the Society are discussed as a form of public reason on economic issues. Examples of the Society’s public interaction are drawn from its publications, projects, and competitions concerning agriculture, arts, science, and education. Section three explores the ways in which the Society functioned like a government ministry both in its operation and in its advocacy of public participation, self-sufficiency, and domestically generated solutions. The extent to which the Society did and did not deal effectively with the biases of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish political and social views, is discussed in the conclusion in section three.
- 2 A major exception was the linen industry, which experienced immense growth due to demand from the E (...)
6The Irish economy in the eighteenth century was severely disadvantaged by English trade policies fueled by mercantilist theory. Given the English mercantilist theory of nation building, as described by Lars Magnusson (2002; 2015), economic plenty was desired in order to assert and display national power. The mercantilist framework to maximize specie, trade, and power provided the economic rationale for England’s Navigation Acts and subsequent restrictions on the wool trade. Due to the possibility that English exports to the colonies and the English cattle market would suffer from Irish competition, the Navigation Acts of 1660 prohibited Irish exports to the colonies and in 1663 prohibited the Irish export of cattle to England. Duties imposed on Irish wool in 1699 destroyed the next best Irish industry. By 1701 exports had fallen by one-third compared to 1698 (Connolly, 2008, 344). In strict mercantilist fashion, Ireland was to be used as a source of raw materials for English manufacturing and England would have the sole privilege of exporting finished goods. The restrictions of the Acts had crippling effects on the majority of the country.2
7The decline of Irish industry increased competition for land use. Due to the prohibition against cattle exports, in the 1670s Irish cattle owners began to sell hides, dairy products, and tallow to other European markets and the plantations and sheep owners began to increase their flocks to sell raw wool to England, which was not prohibited. Landowners began to use more of their land for pasturage than tillage, leaving tenant farmers less land on which to plant, leading to food shortages in the early 1700s that led to further economic decline due to emigration. In 1713 a period of respite came after the Peace of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession, and restored Irish trade with the Continent. However, food shortages due to a weak harvest in 1720 led to an increase in food imports, and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in the same year led to a decrease in demand from England for Irish goods. The Bubble had the additional deleterious effects of first broadening the prospects for and then eroding the wealth of subscribers from Ireland. Due to the restriction of its exports, increasing demand for English imports, and absentee landlords’ expenditure of their rental income abroad, Ireland faced a coinage crisis for most of the early to mid eighteenth century. A series of crop failures in from 1727-1729 compounded the difficulties already in place and led to more economic hardship. At the same time the Irish Parliament was limited in the actions it could take to rectify the situation. The centuries-old Poynings’ Law gave the English Parliament oversight over drafts of Irish legislation and the Declaratory Act of 1720 granted the UK Parliament the power to create laws for Ireland. Any changes in Irish policy that were suspected to advantage Ireland over Great Britain would be vetoed (Connolly, 2008, 344-350; Dickson, 2018; Kelly, 1991; Kelly, 2003, 128-130).
8In the midst of these economic and political challenges, an argument arose in the popular pamphlet literature that the Irish should take steps to change their situation through economic rather than political means. Jonathan Swift, George Berkeley, and others pointed to the illogical nature of Ireland’s poverty, given its abundant natural resources and healthy population size. Swift powerfully protests the country’s condition in the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures in 1720, just one of a number of non-satirical pamphlets he wrote on economic matters. Rather than condemning either the Irish people, as was the standard English response to Ireland’s poverty since the time of William Temple, he condemns the trade restrictions which caused exported wool to be lucrative and fields turned to pasturage rather than tillage, the penal laws, the excessive imports of consumers, and overall inaction of the Irish legislature to amend the situation. Acknowledging that political solutions are not forthcoming he instead argues that changes in domestic consumption would improve the country’s output, employment, and income. Berkeley argues similarly for a change in consumption patterns in The Querist (1735-1737).
- 3 Rashid notes that the aims of the Irish thinkers differed from those of later Scottish political ec (...)
9The founder of the Dublin Society, Thomas Prior, a successful land agent who worked closely with the landlord class, shared Berkeley’s and Swift’s opinions on the causes of Ireland’s economic issues. Previous to establishing the Society, Prior published A List of the Absentees of Ireland (1729), which asserted that landlords should engage in improvement of their lands and the encouragement of Irish agriculture and manufactures rather than spending Irish money abroad. Prior discussed three classes of landlords, who spent most, some, or none of their time in Ireland and their yearly expenditures outside of the country and expenditures by the wealthy in Ireland on imported goods (ibid., 1-17). Thus even those landlords who spent their time in Ireland were responsible for its lack of domestic demand. Like Swift and Berkeley, Prior advocated that the landed class stop importing goods from Britain that could be produced in Ireland. This theory of demand-driven growth for the economy through import substitution is common among the writings of the Irish School, whose prominent members include Swift, Berkeley, Prior, David Bindon, Samuel Madden, and Arthur Dobbs.3 With this demand-based theory in mind, Prior founded the Society and he and his fellows set about implementing ways in which they and the public could establish improved methods and disseminate knowledge of better practices across the country to increase Irish production and demand for Irish goods.
10The Dublin Society is regarded as one of a number of “improving” societies that preceded and existed alongside it in the eighteenth century, as discussed in Stapelbroek and Marjanen (2012). It was aligned with the ideas of betterment of self and society and a belief in a better future that Paul Slack (2015) identifies as arising in seventeenth-century England. The Dublin Society also shared with other improvers the stress on dissemination of knowledge and the harnessing of information and experiment to accomplish improvement (1-8). There were other Irish improving societies in the eighteenth century, but as David Hayton (2012) explains, contemporary groups focused variously on religious, personal, and social improvement. To some improvement meant the conversion of Irish Catholics to Protestantism; to some landlords it meant the establishment of ornamental gardens as a form of conspicuous consumption; and to others it meant the spread of “civility” through the education of the native population in English speech and customs (ibid., 175-198). To the Dublin Society improvement meant dedicated research, discussion, application, and dissemination of practices that generated economic growth and development. Other Irish improvement organizations narrowed their focus to individual issues, such as the Incorporated Society’s promotion of Protestant education. The Dublin Society was unique amongst its fellows for its diffuse support for improvement across the economy, in agriculture, industry, the arts, sciences, education, and infrastructure. The Society’s closest intellectual predecessor, the Society of Improvers of Knowledge in Agriculture, founded in Scotland in 1723, was similarly concerned solely with economic change rather than religious conversion. Members were invited to participate in the collection and discussion of knowledge from their own practices and experiments in agriculture and husbandry. Input was sought from farmers the members interacted with, but they did not invite the general public to submit and discuss their ideas (Bonnyman, 2012). The Dublin Society was thus unique also in that it called for dialogue and participation in its activities from people across a broad range of occupations and interests.
11Besides its economic focus and partnership with the general public, the Society also differs from the other improvement societies in its political context and its rhetoric that viewed all Irish people, regardless of class, religion, or other characteristics, as contributors to the economic success of the nation. James Livesey (2004) views the Society’s work as an attempt to form a civil society for Ireland in the absence of a normalized system of governance. Similarly, I argue that the Society focuses on the economic realm as the civil, creating economic governance for themselves in the absence of political governance by the Irish people for themselves. As a private association it could achieve what the Irish government was not allowed to: the implementation of public-sanctioned, positive economic change without British approval.
12The Society both conducted a variety of projects in private and sponsored experiments and contests for the public. All of them focused on economic improvement. Samuel Madden helped establish a fund for granting premiums for certain activities and grants for those who proposed the best ideas. His plan for the Premium Fund was presented to the Society and passed. Mostly the fund was intended for the development of manufacturing of goods that were currently being imported but could easily be produced in Ireland, such as lace, paper, saltpeter, and table goods. Madden appealed to Society members and prominent members of Irish society at large to subscribe to the fund, and provided seed money himself. He also advocated that the Society begin experimental farms, all near Dublin, in order to test different kinds of soil and establish best practices for agriculture (Madden, 1739).
13In 1740, the Society placed an ad in all Irish newspapers of their intention to encourage manufacturing and the arts through grant funding. The ad further stated that, “To carry out this design, they desire that gentlemen and others who are conversant with husbandry, trade, and manufactures, and wish well to their country, will favour them with their company and advice” in order to have the best input on the variety of trades and what practices should be encouraged, “what encouragements are convenient, and in what manner they may be best applied for the benefit of the public” (ibid., 1).
14Premiums were granted for experiments on growing flax, producing linen, improvements in agricultural implements, growing of various vegetables and grains, and also for the arts. Contests were also established for painting and sculpture as well as largest orchard of fruit trees, largest field of wheat, and so on. Because the markets themselves were not sufficient to provide economic incentives for improved production, the Society provided the initial seed through cash and silver prizes. It was the public who determined best practices through the outcomes of their experiments or through competition with each other and the Society who made sure the results were published and disseminated. Winners of the grant premiums were required to report the results of their experiments first to a local authority such as a magistrate or clergyman, who then reported to the Society. Successful applicants had their methods and results published by the Society in pamphlet form. A committee was formed to oversee the process and judge the samples presented by applicants. Rewards were also advertised in 1740 for the best hops, lace, cider, thread, and flaxseed, among others (Berry, 1915, 55).
15Those who applied for the premiums included not only those in manufacturing and husbandry, but also in the fine arts. The first premiums were awarded to those who worked in linen, napkins, lace, and for improvement of ploughs and shears, and “instruments for spinning, weaving, and cutting fustians” (ibid., 56). A new round of premiums was then advertised for wheat, barley, and hops, and the greatest number of fruit trees, largest quantity of wheat, and other similar ventures. Premiums for sculpture and brewing followed in 1742 and extended to projects as varied as hats, cider, glassware, rags for the paper trade, art, and literature in the years following (Premiums, 1768). By 1769, premiums were being offered for the production of a variety of goods, such as silk, wool, leather, iron, steel, glassware, earthenware, saltpeter, and oil of vitriol. Rewards were also given for land reclamation (bog-clearing), building a better jail, improved thread milling, cotton manufacture, and other agricultural exploits and exploration.
16Educational outreach was also an important part of the Society’s work. The Society’s Drawing School and the School of Art, which promoted painting and sculpture, were established in the 1740s. Attendance was free for all students from 1749 until 1849 when tuition began to be charged (Berry, 1915, 135). The purpose of the schools was not simply to further the fine arts in Ireland, but also to prepare its students for professional occupations and thus further contributions to Ireland’s society and economic improvement. For instance the Plan of Instruction for the Drawing School discusses the inclusion of courses in mathematics, geometry, and the natural sciences purposefully to prepare students for occupations in navigation, engineering, astronomy, and related fields (Fenn, 1769).
17John Wynne Baker, an English agriculturalist, was hired by the Society in 1764 to conduct initial experiments in growing cabbages and turnips. On the Society’s behalf he began an apprenticeship program for youths in husbandry and began to manufacture better farming tools than those currently available in Ireland. The Society published his plan of instruction in 1765. In 1772 a committee was established to assess the progress of the country in literature and the arts. Schools of Chemistry and Mineralogy were established in 1786. The Society’s Library was established in 1731, in accordance with its rule that all literature pertaining to improvement at home and abroad be purchased and maintained. Members also donated their own writings and results of experiments.
18The work of the Society was undertaken with the cooperation of other private and public forces. In the 1730s a number of gardens were purchased for the purpose of experimenting but these plans were abandoned eventually in 1740. The project of establishing the Society’s Botanic Garden was successfully brought to fruition in 1790. Undertaken with the cooperation of the University of Dublin and the College of Physicians, it is assumed that the Garden’s purpose was seen as one contributing to instruction and improvement in botany and medicine rather than as purely ornamental (Berry, 1915, 186-188). Manufacturers and merchants likewise cooperated with the 1764 project of establishing warehouses for the retail silk and wool trades, for the sale only of silks and wools made in Ireland. A percentage of sales would go to the Irish manufacturers (ibid., 198-200).
19The Society was fortunate to exist in a time when Irish print was expanding, which allowed them to more easily disseminate their ideas and engage with the public. In 1732 the Society hired the printer Aaron Rhames to publish its work (Munter, 1967, 166). The Society published pamphlets containing essays and letters by both members, individuals hired to complete specific projects, and members of the public who the Society felt could contribute to the improvement of knowledge of improved methods in agriculture, husbandry, and the arts. For instance, multiple pamphlets by Baker on agricultural methods were published in the 1760s and early 1770s. It also annually published ads for the upcoming premium competitions and detailed outcomes of the previous year’s contests. Most of the pamphlet essays were on agricultural topics, such as The Management of Bees (1733), An Account of Saffron (1734), and the Art of Curing and Tanning (1764), but also expanded into other areas concerning development. Prior’s publications, An Essay to Encourage and Extend the Linen Manufacture in Ireland (1749), A Proposal for Erecting Granaries in the City of Dublin (1741), and an essay on the wonders of tar water, also demonstrate the varied areas of interest of the Society.
- 4 The Society also placed ads in these papers. Some contemporaries said that Catholics preferred Pue’ (...)
- 5 Barnard (2010) estimates that the Society published announcements of its premiums in 1000 pamphlets (...)
- 6 The Society established a formal Journal in 1855.
20Recognizing that there were many in Ireland who could benefit from its findings but who had limited income, the Society also published its Weekly Observations in the less expensive Dublin News Letter in 1732. The essays were so popular that they were regularly copied in two other major Dublin newspapers, Pue’s Occurrences and the Dublin Journal.4 Regional papers, such as the Belfast New-Letter also regularly copied the essays into its contents (Munter, 1967, 166 and n2). Given this and that the Dublin newspapers were circulated throughout the country, the Society’s essays and advertisements reached the public beyond Dublin.5 The Observations encouraged input from its readers and often included lengthy sections from the readership on various matters related to agriculture, the wool and linen trade, and other manufactures. It also continued to post lengthy ads encouraging application for its continued grants and rewards systems.6 The advertisement in the frontispiece of volume I, issue 2 of the digested version of the Observations states that it is circulated for free to its members, whose numbers included 800 in Dublin alone and the “principal Nobility and Gentry of Ireland, and to the leading Scientific Institutions of the United Kingdom” and will also be sold to the public (n.p.). Subsequent issues of the newsletter covered various topics from members’ scientific studies to Irish natural resources.
21In the first issue of the Weekly Observations the authors explain that the Society’s members also published pamphlets to communicate their ideas. The author asserts that ideas in the shorter newsletter will have more of a direct impact because “Directions to the Husbandman and others, confined and cramped by the Dimension of the Paper, something must be lost of the clearness and exactness, which are absolutely requisite to make such Writings useful” and that this new format will make the Society’s instructions “more distinct and more explicit” (ibid., 4). The newsletter was a source not for rumination but for communicating direct practical knowledge to readers who would implement it.
- 7 The Society’s various publications appeared at a time of immense growth and circulation of Irish pr (...)
22The introduction also stresses the benefits of the succinct newsletter over pamphlets in that “Pamphlets fall into few hands, and are useful only to those only who are in a Capacity to purchase, and at leisure to peruse them” (ibid., 6). In terms of income classes, the Society wanted to reach not only the wealthy reading public who had time and money to ponder the contents of pamphlets but also those of lesser means in time and money. Pamphlets were reasonably priced at 1 to 2 pence each in the first half of the eighteenth century, such that “these prices put the costs within the reach of a substantial proportion of the literate anglophone population” (Kelly, 2006, 217). The Society thus was trying to make their work even more accessible through the availability of the even lower cost newsletter.7
23The main intended readers of the weekly publication were those who would implement the knowledge of the Society in their husbandry and production. Rather than publishing instruction for the wealthy, the newsletter was intended for the lower and middle income classes: “The poorer sort, the Husbandman and Manufacturer, are the proper Objects of Instruction, which can hardly ever reach them in any other Method other than the present” (ibid., 6-7).
24The stated purpose of the Society and the Weekly Observations are in the first volume:
Their Intention is not to amuse the Publick, with nice and labored Speculations; or to enrich the learned World … But to direct the Industry of common Artists; and to bring practical and useful Knowledge from the Retirements of Libraries and Closets into publick View: in short, to be universally beneficial is their only End (ibid., 7).
25This end was to be attained either through new discovery, or making known old discoveries through publications, “by conveying present Knowledge, or by conveying it into more Hands,” (ibid., 8).
26Although the weekly was mostly intended for tradesmen and those working in husbandry and agriculture, the newsletter extended its invitation to participation to “all Persons, who truly love their Country” (ibid.). They asked the public to submit their own experiments, observations, comments, and criticism to the Society and the weekly newsletter. It regularly published letters from the public to add insight and sometimes correction on the suggestions of previous issues’ observations. Letters and essays criticizing suggestions that had appeared in previous issues and offering different solutions were also published. Reasoned argument on the best soil in which to grow flax (vol 1, issues 8-15), “Directions for Making Roads (issues 21-22), “Instructions for Making Cyder” and others on turnips, flax, bogs, brewing, and raising riverbanks to avoid floods are examples of the contents, some of which were reprinted with expanded details in pamphlet form.
27The Weekly Observations ceased publication in 1740 when the Society put more of its focus on the premiums for encouraging improvement. The accounts and the proceedings of the Society were also published at least since the 1760s, making the processes of the Society transparent, as if they were a formal public institution.
28Neither a lack of income nor a lack of literacy was a barrier to those who wanted to know the news or a familiarity with popular print. Newspapers were commonly lent to coffee house customers and were read aloud in taverns and other public spaces for those who could not read (Barnard, 2014, 67-68 and Kennedy, 2012, 148-149). The native Irish were not excluded from the proliferation of print. Although very few works were printed in Irish, most of the native Irish were bilingual and thus had access to the same English print culture as the Anglo-Irish. Additionally, works in English were often purchased and then translated by hand or read to others in Irish (Barnard, 2014, 17-20). Therefore those native Irish who participated in the Society’s competitions learned about them not only through word of mouth or local magistrates, but also through the print culture. The Society’s active use of various forms print both disseminated its economic ideas and allowed it to reach beyond its own membership to include other parts of the Irish public.
29The activity of the Society was neither for the sole benefit of its members nor Dubliners alone, but for the growth and development of the country of Ireland. Its activity meets Rawlsian criteria because the practices and ideas that were promoted by the Society were not developed by the membership of the Society alone. Society members tended to be lawyers, businessmen, physicians, clergy, gentry, and politicians but the participants in the competitions and projects of the Society came from varied professions. Craftsmen, agriculturalists, artists and others all provided their input either in writing, through presentation of results, or by winning a competition that had proved one’s methods yielded the best results.
30Widespread public participation can be gauged by the Society’s pamphlets on the upcoming year’s competitions, which each had hundreds of categories, and the lists of the competition winners. Once the premium system was instituted, ads were placed throughout the country in newspapers and in the Society’s newsletters announcing the categories of competition, such as for the person who could produce the most honey and beeswax, plant the most oak trees, plant the greatest quantity of hops, establish fisheries in certain locations, produce the most linen, or produce the most lace. The competitions also included art and writing on various subjects, such as the 1765 entries for the person who could write a natural history of Ireland and another to write a “farmer’s calendar,” indicating adherence to the Society’s goal of gathering and disseminating practical knowledge to all people (ibid., 21). The lists of winners published every year show that people from various professions, including small holding farmers, milliners, brewers, artisans, artists, farmers, miners, silversmiths, papermakers, clothmakers, clergy, and merchants participated from both high- and low-income groups (see Premiums). Even the rat catcher Michael Neadley was awarded a premium for catching and killing 1300 rats with ferrets and nets (National Review, 1890-1891, 797).
31Unlike the formal political processes in Ireland, anyone who was resident in Ireland and earned below a certain income could compete for the Society’s numerous awards. The rules of the premiums also attempted to level the playing field between wealthy landowners and smaller agriculturalists. Those with incomes above £2000 or holders of 200 or more acres of land were barred from cash prizes for those categories for “renters of land,” but could still receive medals if they met criteria for improvements (1765, 22). To maintain fairness, Society members similarly could only earn medals rather than cash prizes. Catholics and Presbyterians were allowed to participate, which they could not fully do in all areas of the rest of Irish social and political life. Catholics often won the premium competitions (Barnard, 2010). As Samuel Madden observed, the majority of tradesmen and “at least four-fifths” of laborers were Catholic and thus an improved economy depended upon their participation (1739, 193).
32Although men feature largely in the publications of the Society, the presence and active contribution of women is seen in the competition winners and also in the input published by the Society. The Society’s published accounts of premium winners show that women won many of the premiums for knitting, lace, spinning, and production of dyes. They also directly competed with men as the 1758 award to both Elizabeth Nix and George Kent for cutlery attests (Accounts, 1764). Women were also represented in the awards for agriculture and planting of fruit trees and elms (Berry, 1915, 62). In 1732 the Society published a letter from Abigail Greenfield, a dairy farmer, who wrote on behalf of her field asking the Society to research the best methods for cheese making and included other practical advice. Besides accepting input from women on improved practices, the Society also supported women’s entrepreneurship. Elizabeth Madden, a widow of a reverend with thirteen children, requested a premium for a thread manufacturing enterprise, and was awarded £100 to purchase a mill and other equipment (Sonnelitter, 113).
33Youth participation can also be seen in various competitions, especially in the arts, for example in the award for the best drawing by boys or girls under fifteen years old. The Society also engaged with younger people through its educational programs. Children and youths from all classes were eligible for places in the Society’s academies for the arts and drawing. Entrance depended upon ability, tested through an entrance exam, rather than income as the tuition for students was paid for by the Society. A perhaps less savory form of engagement of the young were premiums awarded for “most employment of children” by a single employer as in the 1765 premium announcements, the objective of which was to reduce household poverty.
34Through the trial and error process of experimentation and competition, the current best practices available were arrived at by many sectors of society together. Input from the wealthier reading public and the poorer were both included in the publications of the group. Anyone demonstrating a proper level of ability could attend the Society’s schools. Therefore the solutions to an array of issues in Irish production and longer-term growth were developed by the Society not through authoritarian or arbitrary decision-making but in conjunction with those of the Irish public who chose to participate. The knowledge gained from these processes was disseminated as widely as possible through print and through sponsored demonstrations, making the reasoning of the participants transparent. The solutions and methods generated were not for the benefit of any one person, although an individual farmer or essayist might gain momentary individual financial gain and renown, but were for the improvement of all economic sectors and thus the entirety of the country.
35To what extent the Society saw itself as creating a substitute for what would otherwise be the activities of a properly functioning Irish government can be debated. They were aware that they were conscious in taking actions in order to advance Ireland’s economy because they knew that on the one hand they could not wage this battle through a change in Irish legislation and on the other that even if the Navigation Acts and Penal Laws were to change there were still changes required in Irish production methods and the dissemination of knowledge that needed to occur. The published works of the leadership were always careful to discuss the work of the Society in terms of improvement rather than alternate governance, for understandable political reasons. Thus they often presented their work as an expression of patriotism for Ireland and asserted that Ireland’s prosperity would add to rather than harm British greatness. Joep Leersen (1986) shows that Madden and Arthur Dobbs in particular appeal to readers that to promote the commerce of Ireland is a part of promoting the commerce of Great Britain (349-350).
36However, the different methods in production and choices in consumption encouraged by the Society were seen by the Society leadership as a means to create their own “laws.” Samuel Madden wrote, “Though we cannot at will make acts of parliament the nation, we can certainly prescribe laws for ourselves and our own conduct” and cautions gentlemen in individual households to make their choices in alignment with the good of the country (1738, 29). The Society was organized similarly to a government ministry overseeing the economy, with subcommittees and an official presence in different regions of the country. Initially the founding members were each charged with building expertise through research and experimentation in a particular area of agriculture, husbandry, trade, the arts, science, and any other field deemed useful to improve the economic situation of the country. The member overseeing a particular area also directed the experiments and had a say in the publications and presentations of the public to the Society in his area of expertise. In terms of local governance and representation, the Society eventually established the system recommended by Madden in the 1730s. Rather than rely on local magistrates and clergy to report back to the Society, committees of local Society members were established in the major cities across the country to establish more organized communications and disbursement of award funds between Dublin and the people of the country and for local participants to more easily apply for premiums or to have their work presented at the Dublin meetings (Premiums, 1775).
37The members charged with developing an expertise in an area eventually each became heads of committees for the categories above mentioned. However it was not until 1773 that a select Committee on Commerce was established to oversee matters relating to manufacturing and trade, including gathering information not only on production, imports, and exports, but also on matters that affected them such as agriculture, population, and “the oppression of poor working manufacturer by low wages” (Appendix 12). The Committee on Commerce is very clear that it is performing a similar role as that of government boards in other countries. They observe that “every state in Europe have their Chambers of Commerce” and that Great Britain “has her Board of Trade,” but that Ireland had been denied such a means of gathering useful information on matters relating to manufacturing and trade. Although they know that they could not engage in free exportation, the council saw itself as a means to analyse the Irish trade defects and to improve wages “for the industrious poor” (ibid., 5-6). The report of the Committee further opines that they could also be useful in recommending policy to the legislature and that the reason the government had given funds to the Society for distribution was because the government realized that the Society members were “the most proper judges of applying their bounty to the advantage of the country” (ibid., 6).
- 8 This is of course also not to say that the perception of the people was always correct. The Parliam (...)
38Thus there is by the late eighteenth century acknowledgment not only by the Society, but also informally by the Irish government that the Society is performing functions of governance. Rees (2014) observes that the Irish legislature passed agricultural bills on the subjects addressed in the Society’s pamphlets and contests, but always after the Society had done so. Political action on economic issues was driven by the Society rather than the other way around. The Parliament had made its own premium scheme publicly available but the general public would not participate. The Society applied for the funds with the proposals for their various experiments and premiums schemes, thus establishing a means for the Parliament funding to reach its intended sources. Eventually Parliament did away with its premium scheme and allotted annual direct grants of £12,000 to the Dublin Society starting in 1761 (1 Geo III, c. 1). This indicates that the Society had a stronger relationship with the public than the Parliament did.8 In addition to allowing it to purchase land, the royal charter granted to the Society in 1750 gave official recognition to what was already informally known.
39In many ways the Society was seen to be more effective than the Irish government in engagement with many sectors of society and accomplishment of economic goals. They were able to generate the public’s enthusiasm “to engage nationally with National concerns, and pursue the common welfare with a truly publick spirit,” as the final issue of the Weekly Observations exhorted its readers to do (1736-1737, 342). Observers outside of the Society also noted its success relative to the government. The English Lord Chesterfield wrote to Thomas Prior in 1747 that the Dublin Society “have done more good to Ireland, with regard to arts and industry, than all the laws that could have been formed” and emphasized their use of premiums as a form of public “invitation” (6 May 1747). Chesterfield also confided to Madden his fear that the “infinite good” done by the Society could be threatened once it had a charter, that due to the parliamentary funding that such entailed, it could “become subservient to the worst rather than the best designs” (15 September 1748). In becoming beholden to the government for its charter and some of its funding, the Society could lose its ability to be an effective economic ministry working with the public for the public interest.
40The Society’s engagement also reached beyond Ireland. Again mimicking a government function, the Society had a secretary for foreign affairs, of which Thomas Prior was the first, to provide outreach to other countries’ improving societies and to exchange knowledge with one another (Berry, 1915, 21 and Livesey, 2012). Besides the various projects outlined, the Society also established programs for the poor and those unable to work, and incentives for local solutions to unemployment. A pharmacy for the poor, the Pharmacopeia Pauperum, was established in 1767 and overseen by the chemist John Wade. The pharmacy not only supplied the poor with “pure, unadulterated medicines” but also provided medical advice and simple treatment free of charge. By 1770 the pharmacy had treated 1570 patients in Dublin and its surrounding area (Dublin Quarterly, 90-92). Although not offered every year, premiums in many years were offered for the city that could eliminate begging by providing employment for the indigent. Kilkenny won in 1745 for employing over a hundred former beggars (National Review, 797). Premiums were also regularly offered, according to the Society’s reports for “discharged soldiers,” “employment of the blind,” and “employment of children” (Premiums, 1768).
41How then is the Dublin Society, as a private organization, not a private association as defined by Rawls, such as churches, universities, and other groups, making decisions for the public? I argue that the Dublin Society is a different case of a private association working not only on behalf of the public, but also with the public. The Society’s interaction with the public manifested itself in a variety of forms. Members of the Irish public were able to generate input into the projects of the Society, and therefore of their own economy, as they would have done in a politically independent situation. The Society was strongly egalitarian in its outlook that improvement was for everyone and made efforts to disseminate its knowledge to the relevant segments of the public. Because the Society viewed all citizens as participants in the economic community, it offered a sense of egalitarianism in participation and a voice to effect change that the political realm did not offer.
- 9 Programs to transform the Irish into Englishmen through land management, forced relocation, and cul (...)
42It is relevant to question to what extent the actions of the Society, despite its laudable activities and rhetoric of inclusion, improved upon or simply maintained attitudes of paternalism of the Anglo-Irish ruling class towards the Irish people. Did the Society merely replicate the paternalistic norms of the Anglo-Irish Parliament and centuries of English oversight of the Irish economy? Barnard (2008) for instance views the Society as another iteration of longstanding Anglo-Irish and English attempts to “civilize” the Irish under the aegis of improvement.9 The changes that the Society promoted, he argues, were still based on the prejudiced views of earlier authors, such as William Temple, that Ireland was a backward place, the workforce was lazy, and the land unworkable due to its bogs. The Anglo-Irish landed gentry, Barnard argues, were of course interested in such a movement if it “appealed to the self-interest and altruism of the landed” (ibid., 31). It can be argued that the Society’s goals of increasing employment to help laborers and the poor native Irish in general appealed to the gentry’s altruism, and overall improvements to the economy benefitting their own manufacturing ventures and consumption choices appealed to their self-interest. While these things can be true, it is also true that the Society requested the input of the other classes of Ireland, rather than working as a private enterprise that could have collected their data, hired various persons for their experiments, and published personal pronouncements of their findings and therefore of what they recommended the practices of the nation should be. It is also true, as shall be discussed below, that the Society included many members of the gentry but that the majority of active members were clergy, doctors, lawyers, tradesmen, merchants, and academics (Breuninger, 2014).
43As many English authors had done since Edmund Spenser in the sixteenth century, the writings of the Society discuss Ireland’s backwardness. However they do so in terms of economic diagnosis and prescription, rather than identifying underdevelopment as caused by the character flaws of the native Irish. Rather than changing Irish culture or making the Irish into Englishmen, they see the solution to Ireland’s economic “backwardness” in growth and development. The rhetoric of the Society focuses on the goal of working together on a joint enterprise, and it is this that sets it apart from the publications of individuals past and present who tried to “improve” Ireland. The publications of the Society and writings by its leaders do not denigrate the native Irish for their own poverty or the Irish land itself for not being productive. For instance, instead of seeing bogs as evil representations of the hidden sloth of Ireland, as Barnard (2008) says other writers did, the Society’s leaders take a practical approach and study how bogs can be turned into land used for tillage. The bogs can be cleared, not to make Ireland like England as Barnard claims, but because the drained land could be used for crops that would feed the people of Ireland.
44Similarly, what sets the mindset and methods of the Society apart from the Anglo-Irish parliament is the acknowledgment that the improvement of Ireland’s economy requires the input, or public reason, of all the Irish, regardless of class, political, or religious affiliation. The Society’s view of the Catholic majority of the population is cast in a more active and less paternalistic light in this context. Rather than ignore them or focus on their conversion to Protestantism to make them “useful” subjects, as successive governments and other improving societies had, the Society invited engagement with Catholics as contributors to the economy. Society leaders such as Francis Hutchison and Arthur Dobbs recognized that the reason for the natives’ poverty lay neither in their Catholicism nor in an inborn indolence, but rather due to, “having no fixed property in their land, the want of which deprives them of a sufficient encouragement and industry” (Dobbs, 1729-31, 81 and Sneddon, 2008). Madden has prejudiced views regarding “papists” but acknowledges that there is nothing inherent in the native Irish that makes them poor and that they make up “many thousands of merchants and mechanicks” (1738, 103). Similar to Dobbs he argues that “our poor People” who are “idle for want for Employment,” their “Labour would be all clear Gains to the Kingdom” if work could be generated for them (ibid., 128). As previously noted by Leersen (1986), rather than blaming the most vulnerable segment of society for their own poverty, the Society presents a new viewpoint as far as the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy was concerned in their arguments that absentee landlords, bad trade policy, and the consumption of luxury goods were the causes of the poverty of the native Irish (77-78).
45The inclusivity of the Society in terms of soliciting the input from all people of Ireland, disseminating the methods of people of various confessions, ages, and backgrounds, and seeking to improve economic conditions for all the people of Ireland, besides being unique for its time and place, is an important aspect of why I characterize their work as a form of public reason. Ideally public reason should be inclusive of all in society, and as has been shown the ability to do this in the political realm was constrained. Another factor that sets the Society apart and likely contributed to its viewpoint that practical action could be taken by all members of society and that agency did not belong only to the gentry is that the majority of its members were not aristocrats. As Breuninger comments, “within two years the vast majority … were drawn from law and business, which explains the more ‘practical’ bent to their deliberations” (2014, 69). He shows also through data analysis that the members’ interests were more diverse than those of its precursor, the Dublin Philosophical Society, reflective of the members’ variety of professions and backgrounds (ibid., 70).
46Unlike the earlier waves of improvers in Ireland, the Society’s work was more prescriptive than paternalistic. Rather than dictating to the Irish people what they ought to do to change the economy, the group invited participation and dialogue to determine as a public what the best methods for production of various goods were and to encourage development, as seen in the larger-scale projects such as the Society’s schools. The projects and publications of the Society involved sharing of information rather than an imposition of directives. That the process was facilitated mostly by the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy can be seen as a form of paternalism because they brought an Anglo sense of what improvement meant could be argued, but is also problematic because the Anglo-Irish by this period also started to view themselves as Irish rather than English. The Anglo-Irish of the Society differed in their outlook from earlier Englishmen like William Petty who sought command and control over Irish resources, and instead sought a better allocation of resources such that the quality of life for the population as a whole might improve.
47The Society solicited the input of gentlemen, small farmers, scientists, and the laboring classes in multiple fields. Although the native Irish did not have the social power of Society members, their input was still received and sought through a variety of means. The members conducted their own experiments, but mostly relied upon the efforts of the people actually working in agriculture, manufacturing, and the arts for the best practices that they disseminated. More outreach could have been done of course, especially to counter the disadvantages suffered by the Catholic population. However, this also underscores that the native Irish were allowed to participate in the improvement of the country in a way that they were not allowed to participate in the polity of Ireland due to the penal laws that prevented Catholics from owning property, voting, and having other legal rights.
48Due to the limits of their inclusivity, however, it is arguable whether or not the Society fully performed the function of a government engaged in public reason. Although Presbyterians could be non-voting members, Catholics were denied full membership in the Society. Barnard (2010) observes correctly that Catholics could win prizes but because they could not vote on the awarding of funds, were denied the power to decide where the funds went. One could argue that in entering competitions, individual Catholics could make this allocation, but the problem remains that institutionally the Society replicated a major fault of the government’s policies of exclusion, which had implications for allocation of resources. If there were religious bias amongst those who granted the certificates for prizes, then they had a means to further disadvantage Catholics in the distribution of financial resources and knowledge promotion. Although the prizes were awarded based on empirical observation, weight, and measure for the agriculture and husbandry prizes, “official” numbers could be altered to give an entrant a false advantage. The stated ideology of the Society leadership was to encourage productivity and employment and that not allowing Catholic entrants to claim their just rewards would create further disincentives for them from work. Longstanding institutionalized prejudice already ensured the playing field between Catholic and Protestant entrants was not level because the average initial conditions of each were not equal. Indeed, the 1750 royal charter mentioned the king’s support of improvements the Society made to further “civilize the natives” and make them less likely to rebel (quoted in Sonnelitter, 2016, 115). It is notable that various Society members wrote about the inequality that existed and the potential of economic activity to alleviate it, but did not seek to eliminate it in its own membership rules in the eighteenth century. While all the people of Ireland could vie for prizes and submit work for publication, it was still the Anglo-Irish leadership who determined who won the prizes and what would be published. In so doing the Society also replicated Davenant’s argument that the Irish were dependent on the English, or in this case, their Anglo-Irish descendants, to lead them out of a stagnant economy.
- 10 Women were acknowledged in the 1760s as patronesses of Society projects, such as the Dublin silk wa (...)
49Because the Society’s engagement in public reason was based on Ireland’s prosperity through economic rather than political, religious, or class-based action allowed both for it to operate more freely and to attain more public trust in its works than the parliament. Additionally because they were not bound by British oversight the Society was freer to pursue its goals and to encourage its vision. Its economic focus and invitation to all to contribute made the Society more inclusive compared to the parliament. Under the conditions of absentee landlordism and the various strictures on Catholics and Presbyterians in political life, as well as the necessity in parliament of being either Whig or Tory, public reason could not have occurred between the many sectors of the Irish public and the Irish parliament. However, the restrictions on full voting membership for Catholics, and exclusion of women from membership altogether, however, demonstrate that the Society’s engagement with public reason was still bounded by the prejudices of its time.10
50However the overall goals of the Society to improve Ireland’s economy provided potential improved living standards for all. The proposals and projects were homegrown, rather than imposed from abroad, and the self-generation of ideas and their exchange in the sponsored projects, programs, and publications likely lent to their attractiveness to the Irish people compared to proposals or earlier premiums offered by the government. Participation by the public in the projects and publications of the Society demonstrate how diverse parts of Irish society supported the idea reinforced in the Society’s motto, nostri plena laboris, that Ireland’s economic needs and wants could be filled by its own labor, and had the skills to put it into practice. The Society provided an outlet for Irish participation and innovation that could not occur through political means and that needed some stimulus to occur through economic means. Its work and writing demonstrated that public reason took place through economic participation when public, political participation to improve the economy was hindered. The public reasoning of the Irish people and the Dublin Society demonstrated that while external issues harmed the economy, there was a problem from within, a lack of demand for Irish products that could be solved from within. Economic success for the whole people of Ireland stemmed from the participation of the whole people of Ireland.
A very different version of this paper was read at the workshop on public reason at the University of Lausanne in May 2018. The author wishes to thank the participants in the workshop and the editors of the journal, especially Harro Maas, and two anonymous referees, all of whose comments have improved the final product. The research for this paper was made possible by a King-Haggar Scholars grant from the University of Dallas and a Library Research Grant from the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, for which I am very grateful. I also wish to thank the editors and two anonymous referees, all of whose comments greatly improved the final draft.
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