ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Jonathan Swift came to be termed as the propagandist for a Peace. At the beginning of his career as a writer for an English ministry, Swift arrived from Ireland as a vicar with a mission for his church. Welcomed by Robert Harley, the new premier minister, he rejoined but soon distanced himself politically from a circle of Whig friends that included the writers he most esteemed. Swift disparaged the coffee house, an institution that symbolizes what is sometimes called the public sphere, but he conducted his propaganda campaign within that sphere. Despite painful divisions within the ministry and within the Tory ranks, he helped them achieve the Peace of Utrecht, offending Britain's allies but winning solid treaty benefits as well as ending the war. Thanks to his self-destructive habit of lashing out angrily in print when his ministry seemed threatened, he won only an Irish reward for his English service.
