Abbreviated title
Drapier's Letters V, To Viscount Molesworth
JSA Identification Number
Teerink/Scouten Number
ESTC Number
Copy and its Location
A CUL , letter to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Molesworth. Dublin : printed by John Harding, Hib.8.724.7
Publisher and Printer
A letter to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Molesworth. By M.B. Drapier, author of the letter to the shop-keepers, &c., Vol. , pp .
Dublin, Harding, John, 1724.


This is the first edition, printed by John Harding, and published on 31 December 1724. The typography is less exuberant than in the first letter, though there is still plenty of italic. There are few words in capitals, though Swift does use them to draw attention to a charge against him that his is anxious to rebut, that ‘I WENT TOO FAR’. In the final paragraph ‘FREE’ is in capitals. The text is at points slightly less personal than the revision for the 1735 Works.

John Harding had worked as a press corrector for Edward Waters, and was a printer on his own account from 1718 until his death in 1725. He was the printer of two journals, the Post Boy and the Dublin (or Weekly) Impartial, and there were rumours he was in trouble for printing news of the Pretender. He seems to have first been employed by Swift in the protests over the Bank of Ireland in November 1721. He was prosecuted for printing false information about the gold coin on 17 May 1723, and was imprisoned for it. He became Swift’s printer for the Drapier’s Letters in the controversy over Wood’s brass coinage between February and December 1724. After the fourth letter, £300 was offered for discovery of the author, and Harding was taken into custody. Mary Pollard has found no evidence of a prosecution. He died on 19 April 1725. It has been said he died in prison, but the evidence is unclear.