David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the communication I mentioned to the Cathaoirleach yesterday. It is addressed "To the Governors and the subject people of the island of Ireland". Sirs, it is nigh three hundred years since my last epistle. I then had lifted my pen to warn the people of the calamity about to befall the nation from the imposition of a debased currency on the citizenry to their grave disadvantage and peril. I little thought that the employment of a goose's quill would again become necessary after such an interval. It has of late come under my observation that a new punishment has been devised upon the population to their infinite despair and misery by our imperial rulers - to wit, the wanton destruction of 3,000 million of their bank notes- a nice amount and by act of providence as if in warning an exact image of that sum recently diverted from their purse by the Government's proposed budget. Mr. Woods produced at least a currency, though of negligible value. He did not attempt, as is now proposed, to turn real money into a phantasm, a task one had thought only to be engaged in by the academicians of the flying island of Laputa.

It might be thought by some ignorant persons that this matter does not touch the ordering of business but surely it is indeed a central point for this august Chamber, namely, the ordering of the business and the welfare, not just of the Parliament but of the land itself. It is a right universally acknowledged to be expedient, both as a moral necessity and a physical practicality, that those about to be subject to the operation of the thumbscrew and the rack be present on the occasion of their degradation. We, it seems, are to be deprived even of this. I am brought to mind of old Mr. Aesop and his fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper.

In the current case, a reversal of the fable is encountered for it is manifest that the Grasshopper, acting in infamy, hath commenced to devour ourselves, the Ants. We see in our land a dereliction of buildings and businesses and an impoverishment of the citizenry-----