Note 38 — PREFACE.

To favour the English manufacturer, the exportation of the staple commodity and manufacture of Ireland (wool) was prohibited on pain of confiscation, imprisonment, and transportation!! It would be difficult to say whether the infamy or the absurdity of such legislation is the greatest; and indignation at the avarice of the lawgivers, is so largely mixed with contempt for their blind ignorance, that the pen pauses in its vituperation of measures which were so obviously their own punishment. Be it however remarked “en passant,” that the framers of these laws were the aristocracy of England, the most educated and moral people then in existence; a striking proof of the perfect inadequacy of abstract principles of right and wrong to the good government of conduct. Force, and force alone, too generally makes right, in opinion, as well as in fact; and where the power to abuse exists, the will to injure and the sophistry to justify the injury, will never long be wanting.