The Commercial Restraints of Ireland Part 6

Excellency's land agent; also Searcher, Packer, and Gauger of the Port of Cork). 1780. W. Eden (afterwards Lord Lord Carlisle.

Auckland). 1782. Colonel Fitzpatrick. Duke of Portland.

" Lord Grenville (also Chief Lord Temple, Buckingham.

Remembrancer, with 4,000 a year). 1783. Thomas Pelham and William Lord Northington.

Wyndham. 1784. Thomas Orde (afterwards Duke of Rutland.

Lord Bolton). 1787. Alleyne Fitzherbert Marquis of Buckingham again.

(afterwards Lord St. Helens). 1790. Major Hobart (afterwards Lord Westmoreland.

Lord Buckinghams.h.i.+re). 1795. Syl. Douglas (Lord Lord Fitzwilliam.

Glenbervie). " G. Damer (afterwards Lord Lord Camden.

Milton). T. Pelham (afterwards Lord Chichester). 1798. Lord Castlereagh. Lord Cornwallis.

1801. Charles Abbott (afterwards} Speaker of English House } of Commons, and Lord } Colchester); W. Wickham; } Sir Evan Napean } (Treasurer of Irish } Lord Hardwick.

Exchequer); Nicholas } Vansittart (afterwards } Lord Bexley); Charles Long} (afterwards Lord } Farnborough). } 1801. W. Elliott. Duke of Bedford.

1807. Sir A. Wellesley, Robert } Dundas (afterwards Lord } Melville), Wellesley Pole } (also Chancellor of the } Duke of Richmond.

Irish Exchequer, and } afterwards Lord } Maryborough). } 1812. Sir R. Peel. Lord Whitworth.

1818. Charles Grant (Lord Lord Talbot.

Glenleg). 1821. Henry Goulburn. Marquis Wellesley.

1827. W. Lamb (Lord Melbourne). Do. Do.

1828. Lord F. Levenson Gower Marquis of Anglesey and Duke (Lord Ellesmere). of Northumberland.

1830. Sir H. Hardinge (afterwards Marquis of Anglesey again.

Lord Hardinge). " Edward Stanley (Lord Do. Do.

Derby). 1833. Cam Hobhouse, E. J. Marquis of Wellesley again.

Littleton (Lord Hatherton.) 1834. Sir H. Hardinge again. Lord Haddington, and Lord Mulgrave, and Lord Fortescue.

" G. F. W. Howard (Lord Carlisle). 1841. Lord Elliott (Earl St. Lord De Grey.

Germains). 1845. Sir Thos. Freemantle. Lord Heytesbury.

1846. Lord Lincoln. Lord Bessborough.

" Henry Labouchere. Do. Do.

1847. Sir William Somerville. Lord Clarendon.

1853. Lord Naas. Lord Eglinton.

1854. Sir John Young. Lord St. Germains.

1855. Edward Horsman, and Hon. Lord Carlisle.

H. Herbert. 1858. Lord Naas. Lord Eglinton again.

1860. Edward Cardwell. Lord Carlisle again.

1862. Sir R. Peel. Lord Carlisle.

1865. Do. Do. Lord Kimberley.

1866. Chichester Fortescue Do. Do.

(afterwards Lord Carlingford). 1867. Lord Naas (afterwards Lord Duke of Abercorn.

Mayo). 1868. Chichester Fortescue again. Lord Spencer.

1871. Marquis of Hartington. Do. Do.

1873. Sir M. H. Beach. Duke of Abercorn again.

1879. James Lowther. Duke of Marlborough.

1880. W. E. Forster. Lord Cowper.

N.B.--It is instructive to note how very few of the here-mentioned eighty Chief Secretaries, the persons mainly entrusted with the government of the country for 180 years, belonged to the country, or had any real knowledge of its condition and requirements. If the other kingdoms of the earth were administered on this principle, the "_quam parva sapientia_" would excite no astonishment.

INTRODUCTION.

Although this work was published anonymously, there never was any question as to who was its author. It was always known to be the production of Provost Hely Hutchinson, and its first appearance was greeted with two different sorts of reception. It was burned by the Common Hangman so effectually, that Mr. Flood said he would give a thousand pounds for a copy and that the libraries of all the three branches of the legislature could not produce a copy[108]--and at the same time it "earned Mr. Hely Hutchinson's pardon from Irish patriotism for his subserviency to the Court and Lord Townshend."[109] The book was the outcome of the stubborn inability of English rulers to interpret the face of this country; and the first sketch of the publication was the papers which the author contributed to Lord Lieutenant Buckinghams.h.i.+re in 1779 as to the cause of the existing ruin here and as to its cure. The purport of the Letters was to exhibit, calmly and seriously, and as by a friend to both countries, the grievous oppressions which the greedy spirit of English trade inflicted on the commerce, industries, and manufactures of Ireland during the century and a quarter that extended from the Restoration of Charles II. to the rise of Grattan. The author draws all his statements from the Statute Books and Commons Journals of both kingdoms, while he does not fail to support his own conclusions and comments by State Papers and Statistical Returns that possess an authority equal to that of the Statutes. He lays the whole length and breadth of the position steadily and searchingly before the Viceroy's eyes. He shows him that the then state of Ireland teemed with every circ.u.mstance of national poverty, while the country itself abounded in the conditions of national prosperity. Of productiveness there was no lack; but land produce was greatly reduced in value; wool had fallen one half, wheat one third, black cattle in the same proportion, and hides in a much greater. There were no buyers, tenants were not to be found, landlords lost one fourth of their rents, merchants could do no business, and within two years over twenty thousand manufacturers in this city were disemployed, beggared, and supported by alms. All this was after a period of fourscore years of profound internal peace--and the question was, what was the cause of it?

This is what the author sets himself to investigate in the Letters, and in regard of sweep of survey, historic retrospect, statistical quotation, and close economic comment, the investigation leaves little to be desired. The Provost is anxious, in the first place, to point out that it was not absentee rents, salaries, profits of offices, and pensions that caused the decline--and this forestalling admonition is no more than what might be expected from a man who was such an insatiable trafficker in places, and salaries, and profits, and pensions. He admits that these things made the decline more rapid, but a "more radical" cause was to be a.s.signed for a malady that arose out of the const.i.tution itself. He maintains that Ireland was flouris.h.i.+ng, prosperous, and wealthy under James and Charles I., and that after the Restoration it was one of the most improved and improving spots in Europe. This is a somewhat poetical view, especially when we remember how Strafford ruined the landowners and destroyed the wool trade; but wretched as was the condition of the people under the Stuarts, it may have been less unendurable than the condition under "a succession of five excellent sovereigns." In truth, talking about the perpetually developed prosperity of the Irish people under the several successions of English misrule is the very irony of pharisaism, although the recital is a stereotyped phrase of English officials from the Tudor _employes_ down to those of our own days,[110] none of whom ever fail to find "the strings of the Irish harp all in tune." In some periods the distress may have been more intense than in others, and in all periods there were not wanting instances of individual aggrandis.e.m.e.nt--but the general wretchedness remained fast fixed. England has been a constant source of woe to Ireland, and suffering is the badge of all our tribe. In any strict a.s.size Hutchinson would be laughed out of Court for essaying to plead the wealth and prosperity of Ireland directly after the devastations of the Carews and Mountjoys, after the Desmond and Ulster confiscations and evictions, and after the Cromwellian atrocities. Hutchinson knew quite well what the condition of the people was all through; but it suited him, rhetorically, to cut out a corner of the picture and to colour that corner very highly. Graziers used to make a good thing of their cattle and of their wool, and economic returns of their exports showed pleasant balance sheets; but graziers were not the Irish people any more than Manchester is England now. In fact, they were chiefly English landowners here, and the extent of their exports is only the measure of the misery which they left unpitied and unrelieved. This, however, was not the philosophy which Hutchinson wanted to preach; and he was far too clear-headed a man to make a mistake as to what he wanted to say. He accordingly lays hold on the figures that set off his argument, and out of fancy premises he draws a solid conclusion which in no sense needed such controvertible data. What was certain was that Ireland possessed the conditions of prosperity, and that it teemed with actual poverty. The question was, what caused this contradiction? The answer was, England caused it; and this is the answer which Hutchinson plainly and nakedly gives. In all the rest of his book--i.e. from Letter III. to the close--he sustains this thesis with a directness that cannot be gainsayed or resisted. Having related the efforts of Strafford--one of the most malignant enemies that Ireland ever encountered--to crush the wool trade here in the time of Charles I., Hutchinson comes to the acts of the English under Charles II. and William III.

Charles, so far as he could have a liking for anything outside his pleasures, had a liking for Ireland; and William feeling that he had already done Ireland wrong enough, was disposed at last to be merciful and liberal towards her; but both of the kings were overborne by their English parliaments.

In 1663, the English Act "for encouragement of Trade"! contained an insidious clause, imposing a penalty of 2 on each head of Irish cattle, and 10_s._ on each sheep imported into England between July and December.

In 1666, the "Act against importing cattle from Ireland and other places beyond seas, and fish taken by foreigners" was pa.s.sed, and to annoy the king the importation was termed a "nuisance."[111] This Act was made perpetual by the "Act of 1678, prohibiting the importation of cattle from Ireland." This latter Act was not repealed until the 5th of George III., when the permission was granted for seven years; the permission was made perpetual by the 16th of the same reign.

Carte[112] relates at length and with an honest sympathy with Ireland, the whole incident of 1663-8. He tells how the Duke of Ormond, who was then Lord Lieutenant here, together with his valiant son, Lord Ossory, strove manfully for this country, and how he prevailed with the king to delay the obnoxious measure. He mentions also Ormond's n.o.ble enterprise in establis.h.i.+ng at Clonmel the flouris.h.i.+ng Walloon woollen manufactory. Carte records likewise how, in 1666, the Dublin people, when scant of money by virtue of English jealousy, sent over a contribution of 30,000 fat oxen to feed the Londoners who had suffered by the great fire, and how ungraciously the generous boon was received by the ill-mannered English victuallers and by their bribed spokesmen in high places.[113]

Notwithstanding this benevolence of the Irish people, the English persisted in ruining their cattle trade, and before the end of William's reign they pa.s.sed a further law to ruin the Irish woollen trade. This was in 1699, and the long depression and degradation which resulted from it prove, says Hutchinson, "this melancholy truth, that a country will sooner recover from the miseries and devastations occasioned by war, invasion, rebellion, and ma.s.sacre, than from laws restraining the commerce, discouraging the manufactures, fettering the industry, and, above all, breaking the spirit of the people."

This melancholy truth the Provost goes on to ill.u.s.trate and enforce, and he does this by reciting the facts from the beginning, and from year to year continually, as they are recorded in the journals of Parliament. The restriction of the cattle trade in 1666, when the people, in reliance on the continuance of the trade, had greatly increased their live-stocks, compelled the Irish to develop their wool trade. They had been encouraged by their English rulers to devote their energies to this industry, because the "country was so fertile by nature, and so advantageously situated for trade and navigation." Suddenly a Bill was introduced into the English parliament in 1697 and pa.s.sed in 1699, restraining the exportation of woollen manufactures from Ireland, and beseeching His Majesty "in the most public and effectual way that may be, to declare to all his subjects of Ireland, that the growth and increase of the woollen manufacture hath long, and will ever be, looked upon with jealousy by all his subjects of this [England] kingdom," and further "to enjoin all those he employed in Ireland to make it their care and use their utmost diligence, to hinder the exportation of wool from Ireland except to be imported hither [to England], and for the discouraging the woollen manufacture," &c. To this address King William gave the ever memorable reply: "_I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen trade in Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there;[114] and to promote the trade of England_;"

and he wrote to the Lords Justices over here to have a measure to that effect pa.s.sed in the Irish parliament. The Lords Justices accordingly made "a quickening speech" to both Houses; a Bill for their acceptance was transmitted from the Castle, and the Irish parliament, in which the Williamite influence was dominant, pa.s.sed the measure that annihilated the industry and prosperity of their country.[115] By this law an additional duty of twenty per cent. was imposed on broadcloth, and of ten per cent.

on all new draperies except friezes; and the law which was enacted in January, 1699, was to be in force for three years. This law, prohibitive as it was, did not, however, satisfy England. In the June of the same year the English parliament pa.s.sed a perpetual law, not overtaxing but expressly prohibiting the exportation from Ireland of all goods made of or mixed with wool, except to England and Wales, and with the licence of the Revenue Commissioners. Previous English Acts had made the duties on the importation into England practically prohibitive, and therefore the last Act operated as a suppression of exportation. The Irish were already prevented from importing dye-stuffs from the colonies, and from exporting their woollen manufactures thither. What England wanted was, not a fair compet.i.tion with Ireland, but a monopoly; she was resolved to prevent Ireland not merely from underselling her in foreign markets, but from selling there at all.

The natural and actual result of this exorbitant greed was that the Irish people were driven to have recourse to the method of "running the wool,"

i.e. smuggling it away to foreign markets. The severest penalties were enacted by the British legislature and by the Irish House of Commons against this practice, but they were enacted in vain. It was impossible to seal up a country of whose thirty-two counties nineteen are maritime and the rest washed by fine rivers that empty themselves into the sea. The wool running prevailed to an immense extent, and by means of it France, Germany, and Spain were able to undersell England in the foreign markets, and England lost millions of pounds by virtue of the Irish contraband supplies. The market price of Europe mocked the English importation duties, and more than defeated the prohibition. At last, in 1739, after forty years of oppression here and loss to herself, England relaxed the severity of the restrictions, and as her own House of Commons Journal acknowledges, this relaxation was made for the benefit of the English woollen manufactures. For the twenty-three years that succeeded King William's pledge to ruin the best trade in this country, there is an unvaried record of the depression and misery of the Irish people, and during all this period and in the face of all this acknowledgment, there was not even a proposal of any law, saving one about casks for b.u.t.ter and tallow, to encourage our manufactures, or to tolerate our trade, or to let the country revive. There was a native parliament here, and why did they exhibit this wondrous apathy? "Because," says our author, "it was well understood by both Houses of Parliament that they had no power to remove those restraints which prohibited trade and discouraged manufactures, and that any application for that purpose would at that time have only offended the people on one side of the Channel without bringing any relief to those on the other."

In 1723, the pet.i.tion of the woollen weavers and clothiers of Dublin forced from the Lord Lieutenant in his speech from the throne a recommendation to find out some employment for the poor, but neither pet.i.tion nor speech produced any effect. From 1723 to 1729 the distress continued; in the latter year it was aggravated by a famine. The scarcity was caused not by any blight of the land produce, but by the despair of the farmers; for when exportation is prohibited, and the manufacturing cla.s.s at home is without employment and without money to buy, farmers will abandon tillage and dearth must ensue. In a few years more there was another scarcity of food, and then the Lord Lieutenant congratulated the country on the success of the linen trade, and recommended the encouragement of tillage. Nothing, however, was done to alter the conditions on which the improvement of the tillage depended, "because the Commons said that the evil was out of their reach and that the poor were not employed because they were discouraged by restrictive laws from working up the materials of the country." Thus matters went on from bad to worse until after the peace of 1745, when there came an influx of money, by which the debt that had been contracted for England's Jacobite war of 1715 was paid off in 1754, and the result of this discharge was increased burdens on the country without any accompanying relief to commerce and industries. The Treasury balance led, in 1753, to a dispute as to the right of disposing of it between the King and the Commons; and this dispute was the first beginning of parliamentary life in Ireland.[116] To get rid of the redundancy and to leave the less for English pensions and Government salaries, works of local improvement were undertaken, and these undertakings, so far as they were carried out, helped to give employment and to stimulate agriculture.

This, however, was but a partial and insufficient remedy for the universal distress, and small as it was, it was obtained against the will of the English Government. No real relief was conferred on the country, and within a couple of years more the revenue fell off, and 20,000 was voted for the relief of the poor.

In 1757[117] it was thought an amazing feat when Pery carried his Land Carriage and Coal Acts; and then, in 1761, came the augmentation of the army.[118] On the breaking out of the Spanish war, there was a fresh vote of credit, and still no relief to manufacturers or to agriculturists. This distress, caused by English-made laws, Hutchinson points out, produced the White Boys, and for the cure of this distress an increased attention to the Charter Schools was recommended. By 1771 the National Debt had largely increased, while income had diminished, and in a couple of years more the linen trade was rapidly declining, while pensions and charges on the establishment were greatly increased.

The Provost dwells on the ill.u.s.trative fact, that, whether the Debt was increased or diminished, and however much the pensions and salaries were multiplied, the distress and wretchedness of the body of the people continued the same. The linen manufacture for a while prospered, and afforded a limited relief in a few places; but tillage was declining, and dest.i.tution was all round. The distress was noticed in the House, but nothing effectual was attempted, and Hutchinson cannot refrain from exclaiming: "Can the history of any other fruitful country on the globe, enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and wretchedness, and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders of the people? There is no such example in ancient or modern story. If the ineffectual endeavours by the representatives of those poor people to give them employment and food, had not left sufficient memorials of their wretchedness; if their habitations, apparel, and food, were not sufficient proofs, I should appeal to the human countenance for my voucher, and rest the evidence on that hopeless despondency that hangs on the brow of unemployed industry."

All these restrictions were enacted by England, not from any actual loss that she had sustained by Irish compet.i.tion, but from an apprehension of loss. Hutchinson shows how groundless the apprehension was, and he protests against the iniquity of sacrificing the happiness of a great and ancient kingdom, and the welfare of millions of its people, to guard against an imagined decrease in the value of English land. If wool-spinning was cheaper in Ireland than in England, that was because the Irish operatives had to live on food--"potatoes and milk, or more frequently water"[119]--with which the English would not be content; but wages and the cost of producing would increase with the opening of trade, and with the increase of manufactures. England's greedy monopoly was sinking the Irish people, while fair trade would really lessen the cheap labour compet.i.tion which the English masters professed to dread. An open wool trade in Ireland would, moreover, be mainly carried on by English capitalists and by English s.h.i.+pping, just as in ancient Egypt, China, and Hindostan, the export trade used to be conducted by foreigners; and just as in the victualling trade of Ireland, the natives were but factors to the English. On every side, therefore, the English themselves suffered as much by the restrictions as the Irish, and they would be, if they could but see it, proportionate gainers by the removal of the restrictions.

Hutchinson goes on to show that England gets one-third of the wealth of Ireland, and that she would get more than the half of the benefit of the wool trade; but that even so the country would be the better for the small share of the gains that would be allowed to remain with her. Agriculture would be encouraged, and manufactures would be promoted; and there would be a circulation of money amongst the people. Taxes were proportionately heavier in Ireland than in England, when the annual earnings, expenditure, rentals, circulating specie, and personal property of the two countries were compared. The English were mistaken in some of the calculations on which they grounded the commercial restrictions, and they would be commercial gainers by the removal of the restrictions; but it was not for the benefit of England, and it was for the benefit of Ireland, that the Provost demanded free and open commerce for the produce and manufactures of this country. This was what he claimed and argued for, and this was what he very largely helped to obtain for Ireland; and this was the service that won him back a great deal of the popularity which he had forfeited by his hired subserviency to the English party.

There is a good deal of repet.i.tion in the Provost's book as we have it, but this is accounted for by the fact that the book was originally published in the form of letters.[120] The repet.i.tions, moreover, are not altogether artistic blemishes, for they are made to intensify, and, as it were, to multiply, the identical facts by presenting them in fresh connections. This is notably the case in regard of the Provost's doublings back on the wool trade, and on the linen trade, and on England's dealings with Ireland in regard of both these trades. After the destruction of the cattle trade these were the two sources of industry left to this country, and therefore the record of the treatment and evolution of these trades is in fact the history of the commercial relations between England and this country. The Provost accordingly takes the wool and the linen trade as the fixed pillars of his discourse, and he interpolates the s.p.a.ces between them with coincident statistics that ill.u.s.trate his thesis. It is thus that in page 83 he comes back to the wool trade to show the falsehood of the English trade returns, which a.s.serted that the trade "was set up here since the reduction of Ireland" by Cromwell. The trade had been a flouris.h.i.+ng one in this country from the time of Edward III. Then in the Sixth Letter the Provost takes up the linen trade again, for the purpose of showing more emphatically, in the first place, that it was forced on Ireland as an equivalent for the loss of the wool trade; in the second place, that it was not at all an equivalent--and in the third place, that England before long broke her stipulations with this country, and so _discouraged_ the hemp and linen manufacture of Ireland, that the Irish had to abandon the flax culture altogether. In 1705, leave was given to Ireland to export some sorts of linen to the colonies, but leave was not given to bring back dye stuffs or other colonial produce. In 1743, bounties were offered on exports of Irish linen, provided they were s.h.i.+pped from English ports; but there was already a duty of thirty per cent. on _foreign_ linen imported into England; and thus Ireland was, of course, deprived of the colonial and other markets. Not till 1777 were the American markets opened to Ireland, and by that time the emigration of the Ulster linen-workers had become so enormous, that America was, in fact, a rival in the trade. What words can more offensively and more bitterly express the oppression of the country than this leave to trade with other countries? It took Grattan and Hussey Burgh "with their coats off," and it took the Volunteers with their motto "Free Trade, or ----," to sweep away this badge of slavery. All the time England was multiplying pensions and salaries here; she was levying taxes and draining rents; and, as Hutchinson clearly puts it, Ireland "was paying to Great Britain double the sum that she collects from the whole world in all the trade which Great Britain allows her. It would be difficult to find a similar instance in the history of mankind." Again and again the Provost comes back to point out the open tyranny and the underhand unfairness of England's commercial legislation for this country, and in the Seventh Letter he repeats that this legislation was a departure from the policy which was guaranteed by Magna Charta, and which had prevailed from the time of Edward III. When a supposed compensation was afterwards offered, it was no more than what Ireland had had before, and the liberty granted by Queen Anne was merely allowing us to do in regard of one manufacture what had previously been a right in every instance.

"At this earlier period, then," says Hutchinson, "the English commercial system and the Irish, so far as it depended upon the English statute law, was the same; and before this period, so far as it depended upon the common law and Magna Charta, it was also the same."

"This was the voice of nature," he adds, "and the dictate of sound and generous policy; it proclaimed to the nations that they should not give to strangers the bread of their own children; that the produce of the soil should support the inhabitants of the country; that their industry should be exercised on their own materials, and that the poor should be employed, clothed, and fed.

"This policy was liberal, just, and equal; it opened the resources and cultivated the strength of every part of the empire."

From this liberal and profitable policy, however, England departed towards the close of the seventeenth century, and manifold were the wrongs which the departure inflicted on this country. The Provost details these wrongs with the indignation of a patriot; he rails at the oppression which, by depriving the people of liberty, robbed them of half their vigour; but still as a courtier and as a Government man, he was able to "_revere that conquest which has given to Ireland the Common Law and the Magna Charta of England_." Why he revered the Conquest, when the Common Law and Magna Charta failed to protect the welfare of Ireland, the Provost does not state. Two things stand out clearly throughout the treatise--one is that Ireland, both as a producer and as a consumer, has been immensely profitable to England; and the other is that England has been the source of vast evil and suffering to Ireland. The purport of "The Commercial Restraints" is to set forth these two great truths, and the record may be read now without prejudice on one side of the Channel, and without panic or pa.s.sion on the other. The teaching of the book ought to be palpable enough for the men of the present day. It ought to convince Englishmen that it is time for them to distrust their "resources of civilisation,"

and to let this country prosper; and it ought to remind Irishmen that they are the best judges of what they want, and that their road to prosperity is independence of English conceit, together with a st.u.r.dy development of their own native resources.

In and since Provost Hutchinson's time Ireland has won vast conquests from her oppressor, and she has won them all by the same weapon--firm and const.i.tutional discontent. She has much to win still, and she will surely win it by the same method, while outside that method she is powerless.

Free Trade and Parliamentary Independence were won without shedding a drop of blood, and the conditions of the fight for what is required now are far more propitious and hopeful than they were a century ago. Then, Ireland had to contend with an obstinate king, a wrong-headed minister, and a greedy nation; now, all these things are changed. The men of '82, no doubt, had at their back the Irish Volunteers that England feared, and there are no Irish Volunteers now; their place, however, is supplied by a more coercive force, and that force is the spirit of justice which is spreading through the Liberals of England, and is fed by the Liberals of Ireland. But even supposing that all these demands touching land, education, and autonomy, were granted, there still remains another object for Irishmen to work out, namely, the recreation of their home industries and manufactures. The land, after all, is not everything--all the people cannot live by it and out of it--and, as Hutchinson observes, no one industry is sufficient to maintain a numerous population in prosperity and comfort.

In past times, as a couple of months ago the Lord Lieutenant at Belfast, and Mr. Fawcett at Sh.o.r.editch, were saying,[121] all these industries in the country were prohibited by unjust and iniquitous legislation, and by a ma.s.s of vexatious restrictions; but there are no prohibitions now, and the country abounds with the conditions and materials of prosperity. Bishop Berkeley wrote, when the prohibiting laws had been seventy years in operation, and when the force that swept them away had not yet begun to breathe in the country. He regarded the laws with despair, and piteously bemoaned the dest.i.tution and degradation in which the people were fixed.

His earnest exhortation to them was to compensate themselves for the loss of the foreign trade by developing home industries and manufactures; and he asked[122] whether the natives might not be able to effect their own prosperity and elevation, even though "there was a wall of bra.s.s a thousand cubits high round this kingdom?"

Lord Clare, in his Union speech, declared that Ireland made more progress in her eighteen years of freedom than ever nation made in the same period; and it will be now for the working-men of this generation to show that, in enterprise and trades-craft they are not degenerate from their half-taught forefathers who won Fitzgibbon's testimony. There is every ground for confident antic.i.p.ation, that this year's National Exhibition will profoundly and widely strengthen the effort for the revival of our Native Industries, and it is with the desire to contribute somewhat to the all-important and patriotic impulse that "The Commercial Restraints of Ireland" is now reproduced by the publishers.