THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND CONSIDERED. (continued 2)
Reading edition
I wish that the fullest information may be had in this important investigation, but between the inconsistent accounts and opinions that will probably be given, experience only can decide; and experience will demonstrate that the removal of those restraints will promote the prosperity of both kingdoms.
I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.
Sixth Letter.
Dublin, 1st September, 1779.
My Lord,
By the proceedings in the English Parliament, in the year 1698, and the speech of the Lords Justices to the Irish Parliament in that year, it appears that the linen was intended to be given to this country as an equivalent for the woollen manufacture. The opinion that this supposed equivalent was accepted as such by Ireland is mistaken. The temperament which the Commons of Ireland in their address said they hoped to find was no more than a partial and temporary duty on exportation, as an experiment only, and not as an established system, reserving the exportation of frieze, then much the most valuable part to Ireland.[311] The English intended the linen manufacture as a compensation, and declared that they thought it would be much more advantageous to Ireland[312] than the woollen trade.
This idea of an equivalent has led several persons, and, among the rest, two very able writers[313] into mistakes from the want of information in some facts which are necessary to be known, that this transaction may be fully understood, and, therefore, ought to be particularly stated.
The Irish had before this period applied themselves to the linen trade. This appears by two of their statutes, in the reign of Elizabeth, one laying a duty on the export of flax and linen yarn,[314] and the other making it felony to ship them without paying such duty.[315] In the reign of Charles I. great pains were taken by Lord Strafford to encourage this manufacture, and in the succeeding reign[316] the great and munificent efforts of the first duke of Ormond were crowned with merited success. The blasts of civil dissensions nipped those opening buds of industry; and, when the season was more favourable, it is probable that, like England, they found the woollen manufacture a more useful object of national pursuit, which may be collected from the address of the English House of Commons, “that they so unwillingly promote the linen trade,”[317] and it was natural for a poor and exhausted country to work up the materials of which it was possessed.
In 1696 the English had given encouragement to the manufactures of hemp and flax in Ireland, but without stipulating any restraint of the export of woollen goods. The English Act made in that year recites that great sums of money were yearly exported out of England for the purchasing of hemp, flax, and linen, and the productions thereof, which might be prevented by being supplied from Ireland, and allows natives of England and Ireland to import into England, free of all duties,[318] hemp and flax, and all the productions thereof. In the same session[319] a law passed in England for the more effectually preventing the exportation of wool, and for encouraging the importation thereof from Ireland. Both those manufactures were under the consideration of Parliament this session, and it was thought, from enlarged views of the welfare of both kingdoms, that England should encourage the linen without discouraging the woollen manufacture of Ireland. There was no further encouragement given by England to our linen manufacture for some years after the year 1696.[320] In 1696 there was no equivalent whatever given for the prohibition of the export of our woollen manufactures.
It is true the assurances given by both Houses of Parliament in England for the encouragement of our linen trade were as strong as words could express; but was this intended encouragement, if immediately carried into execution, an equivalent to Ireland for what she had lost? Let it first be considered whether it was an equivalent at the time of the prohibition.
The woollen was then the principal manufacture and trade of Ireland. That it was then considered as her staple, appears from the several Acts of Parliament before mentioned, and from the attempt made in 1695 by the Irish House of Commons to lay a duty on all old and new drapery imported. The amount of the export proves[321] the value of the trade to so poor a country as Ireland, and makes it probable that she then clothed her own people. The address of the English House of Lords shows that this manufacture was “growing” amongst us, and the goodness of our own materials “for making all manner of cloth.”[322] And the English Act of 1698 is a voucher that this manufacture was then in so flourishing a state as to give apprehensions, however ill founded, of its rivalling England in foreign markets. The immediate consequences to Ireland showed the value of what she lost; many thousands of manufacturers were obliged to leave this kingdom for want of employment; many parts of the southern and western counties were so far depopulated that they have not yet recovered a reasonable number of inhabitants; and the whole kingdom was reduced to the greatest poverty and distress.[323] The linen trade of Ireland was then of little consideration, compared with the woollen.[324] The whole exportation of linens, in 1700,[325] amounted only in value to £14,112. It was an experiment substituted in the place of an established trade.
The English ports in Asia, Africa, and America were then shut against our linens; and, when they were opened[326] for our white and brown linens, the restraints of imports from thence to Ireland made that concession of less value, and she still found it her interest to send, for the most part, her linens to England. The linen could not have been a compensation for the woollen manufacture, which employs by far a greater number of hands, and yields much greater profit to the public, as well as to the manufacturers.[327] Of this manufacture there are not many countries which have the primum in equal perfection with England and Ireland; and no countries, taking in the various kinds of those extensive manufactures, so fit for carrying them on. There cannot be many rivals in this trade: in the linen they are most numerous. Other parts of the world are more fit for it than Ireland, and many equally so.
If this could be supposed to have been an equivalent at the time, or to have become so by its success, it can no longer be considered in that light. The commercial state of Europe is greatly altered. Ireland can no longer enjoy the benefit intended for her. It was intended that the great sums of money remitted out of England to foreign countries in this branch of commerce should all centre in Ireland, and that England should be supplied with linen from thence;[328] but foreigners now draw great sums from England in this trade, and rival the Irish in the English markets. The Russians are becoming powerful rivals to the Irish, and undersell them in the coarse kinds of linen. This is now the staple manufacture of Scotland. England, that had formerly cultivated this manufacture without success, and had taken linens[329] from France to the amount of £700,000 yearly, has now made great progress in it. The encouragement of this trade in England and Scotland has been long a principal object to the British Legislature; and the nation that encouraged us to the undertaking has now become our rival in it.[330] That this is not too strong an expression will appear by considering two British statutes, one of which[331] has laid a duty on the importation of Irish sail-cloth into Great Britain, as long as the bounties should be paid on the exportation from[332] Ireland, which obliged us to discontinue them; and the other[333] has given a bounty on the exportation of British chequered and striped linens exported out of Great Britain to Africa, America, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, the island of Minorca, or the East Indies. This is now become a very valuable part of the manufacture, which Great Britain, by the operation of this bounty, keeps to herself. The bounties on the exportation of all other linen, which she has generously given to ours as well as to her own,[334] operate much more strongly in favour of the latter;[335] the expense of freight, insurance, commission, &c., in sending the linens from Ireland to England has been computed at four per cent.; and if this computation is right, when the British linens obtain £12 per cent., the full amount of the premium, the Irish do not receive above eight. Those bounties, though acknowledged to be a favour to Ireland, give Great Britain a further and a very important advantage in this trade, by inducing us to send all our linens to England, from whence other countries are supplied.
The great hinge upon which the stipulation on the part of England, in the year 1698, turned was, that England should give every possible encouragement to the linen and hempen manufactures in Ireland. Encouraging those manufactures in another country was not compatible with this intention. The course of events made it necessary to do this in Scotland;[336] the course of trade made it necessary for England to do the same. A commercial country must cultivate every considerable manufacture of which she has or can get the primum. These circumstances have totally changed the state of the question; and if it was reasonable and just that Ireland, in 1698, should have accepted of the linen in the place of the woollen manufactures, it deserves to be considered whether by the almost total change of the circumstances it is not now unreasonable and unjust.
America itself, the opening of whose markets[337] to Irish linens was thought to have been one of the principal encouragements to that trade, is now become a rival and an enemy; and when she puts off the latter character, will appear in the former with new force and infinite advantages.
The emigration for many years of such great multitudes of our linen manufacturers to America,[338] proves incontrovertibly that they can carry on their trade with more success in America than in Ireland. But let us examine the facts to determine whether the proposed encouragements have taken place. The declaration of the Lords of England for the encouragement of the linen manufacture of Ireland was “to all the advantage and profit that kingdom can be capable of;” and of the Commons, “that they shall be always ready to give it their utmost assistance.” The speech of the Lords Justices shows the extent of this engagement, and promises the encouragement of England “to the linen and hempen manufactures of Ireland.”
In the year 1705[339] liberty was given to the natives of England or Ireland to export from Ireland to the English plantations white and brown linens only, but no liberty given to bring in return any goods from thence to Ireland, which will appear from the account in the Appendix to have made this law of inconsiderable effect. In 1743 premiums were given on the exportation of English and Irish linens from Great Britain; and the bounty granted by Great Britain, in 1774, on flax seed imported into Ireland is a further proof of the munificent attention of Great Britain to our linen trade. But chequered, striped, printed, painted, stained, or dyed linens were not until lately admitted into the plantations from Ireland; and the statutes of Queen Anne,[340] laying duties at the rate of thirty per cent. on such linens made in foreign parts and imported into Great Britain, have been, rather by a forced construction, extended to Ireland, which is deprived of the British markets[341] for those goods, and, until the year 1777,[342] was excluded from the American markets also. But it is thought, as to chequered and striped linens, which are a valuable branch of the linen trade, that this Act will have little effect in favour of this country, from the operation of the before-mentioned British Act of the 10th G. 3, which, by granting a bounty on the exportation of those goods of the manufacture of Great Britain only gives a direct preference to the British linen manufacture before the Irish.
The hempen manufacture of Ireland has been, so far, discouraged by Great Britain, that the Irish have totally abandoned the culture of hemp.[343]
I hope to be excused for weighing scrupulously a proposed equivalent, for which the receiver was obliged to part with the advantages of which he was possessed. The equivalent, given in 1667, for the almost entire exclusion of Ireland from the ports of England and America, was the exportation of our manufactures to foreign nations. The prohibition of 1699 was not altogether consistent with the equivalent of 1667; and from the equivalent of 1698 the superior encouragement since given to English and Scotch linen, and the discouragement to the chequer and stamped linen and sail-cloth of Ireland must make a large deduction. But why must one manufacture only be encouraged? The linen and the woollen trades of Ireland were formerly both encouraged by the legislatures of both kingdoms; they are now both equally encouraged in England.
If this single trade was found sufficient employment for 1,000,000 men who remained in this country at the time of this restraint (the contrary of which has been shown), it would require the interposition of more than human wisdom to divide it among 2,500,000 men at this day, and to send the multitude away satisfied.
No populous commercial country can subsist on one manufacture; if the world has ever produced such an instance I have not been able to find it. Reason and experience demonstrate that, to make society happy, the members of it must be able to supply the wants of each other, as far as their country affords the means; and, where it does not, by exchanging the produce of their industry for that of their neighbours. When the former is discouraged, or the latter prevented, that community cannot be happy. If they are not allowed to send to other countries the manufactured produce of their own, the people who enjoy that liberty will undersell them in their own markets; the restrained manufacturers will be reduced to poverty, and will hang like paralytic limbs on the rest of the body.
If England’s commercial system would have been incomplete, had she failed to cultivate any one principal manufacture of which she had or could obtain the material, what shall we say to the commercial state of that country, restrained in a manufacture of which she has the materials in abundance, and in which she had made great progress, and almost confined to one manufacture of which she has not the primum.
Manufactures, though they may flourish for a time, generally fail in countries that do not produce the principal materials of them. Of this there are many instances. Venice and the other Italian states carried on the woollen manufacture until the countries which produced the materials manufactured them, when the Italian manufactures declined, and dwindled into little consideration in comparison of their former splendour. The Flemings, from their vicinity to those countries that produced the materials, beat the Italians out of their markets. But when England cultivated that manufacture, the Flemings lost it. That this, and not oppression, was the cause, appears from the following state of the linen manufacture[344] there, because it consumes flax, the native produce of the soil; and it is much to be feared that those islands will be obliged to yield the superiority in this trade to other nations that have great extent of country, and sufficient land to spare for this impoverishing production.
That some parts of Ireland may produce good flax must be allowed, and also that parts of Flanders would produce fine wool. But though the legislature has for many years made it a capital object to encourage the growth of flax and the raising of flax-seed in this kingdom, yet it is obliged to pay above £9,000 yearly in premiums on the importation of flax-seed, which is now almost imported, and costs us between £70,000 and £80,000 yearly. Flax farming, in any large quantity, is become a precarious and losing trade,[345] and those who have been induced to attempt it by premiums from the Linen Board have, after receiving those premiums, generally found themselves losers, and have declined that branch of tillage.
When the imported flax-seed is unsound and fails, in particular districts, which very frequently happens, the distress, confusion, and litigation that arise among manufacturers, farmers, retailers, and merchants, affords a melancholy proof of the dangerous consequences to a populous nation when the industry of the people and the hope of the rising year rest on a single manufacture, for the materials of which we must depend upon the courtesy and good faith of other nations.
Let me appeal to the experience of very near a century in the very instance now before you. A single manufacture is highly encouraged; it obtains large premiums, not only from the legislature of its own country, but from that of a great neighbouring kingdom; it becomes not only the first, but almost the sole national object; immense sums of money are expended in the cultivation of it,[346] and the success exceeds our most sanguine expectations. But look into the state of this country; you will find property circulating slowly and languidly, and in the most numerous classes of your people no circulation or property at all. You will frequently find them in want of employment and of food, and reduced in a vast number of instances from the slightest causes to distress and beggary. All other manufacturers will continue spiritless, poor, and distressed, and derive from uncertain employment a precarious and miserable subsistence; they gain little by the success of the prosperous trade, the dealers in which are tempted to buy from that country to which they principally sell; the disease of those morbid parts must spread through the whole body, and will at length reach the persons employed in the favoured manufacture. These will become poor and wretched, and discontented; they emigrate by thousands; in vain you represent the crime of deserting their country, the folly of forsaking their friends, the temerity of wandering to distant, and, perhaps, inhospitable climates; their despondency is deaf to the suggestions of prudence, and will answer, that they can no longer stay “where hope never comes,” but will fly from these “regions of sorrow.”[347]
Let me not be thought to undervalue the bounties and generosity of that great nation which has taken our linen trade under its protection. There is much ill-breeding, though, perhaps, some good sense, in the churlish reply of the philosopher to the request of the prince who visited his humble dwelling, and desired to know, and to gratify his wishes; that they were no more than this, that the prince should not stand between the philosopher and the sun. Had he been a man of the world he might have expressed the same idea with more address, though with less force and significance; he might have said, “I am sensible of your greatness and of your power; I have no doubts of your liberality; but Nature has abundantly given me all that I wish; intercept not one of her greatest gifts; allow me to enjoy the bounties of her hand, and the contentment of my own mind will furnish the rest.”
I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.
Seventh Letter.
Dublin, 3rd September, 1779.
My Lord,
By comparing the restrictive law of 1699 with the statutes which had been previously enacted in England from the fifteenth year of the reign of Charles II., relative to the colonies, it appears that this restrictive law originated in a system of colonisation. The principle of that system was that the colonies should send their materials to England and take from thence her manufactures, and that the making those manufactures in the colonies should be prohibited or discouraged. But was it reasonable to extend this principle to Ireland? The climate, growth, and productions of the colonies were different from those of the parent country. England had no sugar-canes, coffee, dying stuff, and little tobacco. She took all those from her colonies only, and it was thought reasonable that they should take from her only the manufactures which she made. But in Ireland the climate, soil, growth, and productions are the same as in England, who could give no such equivalent to Ireland as she gave to America, and was so far from considering her when this system first prevailed, as a proper subject for such regulations, that she was allowed the benefits arising from those colonies equally with England, until the fifteenth year of the reign of King Charles II.[348] By an Act passed in that year, Ireland had no longer the privilege of sending any of her exports, except servants, horses, victuals, and salt, to any of the colonies; the reasons are assigned in the preamble “to make this kingdom a staple, not only of the commodities of those plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries and places for the supplying of them, and it being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade to themselves.”[349] At the time of passing this law, though less liberal ideas in respect of Ireland were then entertained, it went no further than not to extend to her the benefits of those colony regulations; but it was not then thought that this kingdom was a proper subject for any such regulations. The scheme of substituting there, instead of the woollen, the linen trade, was not at that time thought of. The English were desirous to establish it among themselves, and by an Act of Parliament,[350] made in that year for encouraging the manufacture of linen, granted to all foreigners who shall set up in England the privileges of natural born subjects.
But it appears by the English Statute of the 7th and 8th of William III.,[351] which has been before stated, that this scheme had not succeeded in England, and from this act it is manifest that England considered itself as well as Ireland interested to encourage the linen manufacture there; and it does not then appear to have been thought just that Ireland should purchase this benefit for both, by giving up the exportation of any other manufacture. But in 1698 a different principle prevailed, in effect the same, so far as relates to the woollen manufacture, with that which had prevailed as to the commerce of the colonies. This is evident from the preamble of the English law,[352] made in 1699, “for as much as wool and woollen manufactures of cloth, serge, bays, kersies, and other stuffs, made or mixed with wool, are the greatest and most profitable commodities of this kingdom, on which the value of lands and the trade of the nation do chiefly depend, and whereas great quantities of like manufactures have of late been made and are daily increasing in the kingdom of Ireland, and in the English plantations in America, and are exported from thence to foreign markets heretofore supplied from England, which will inevitably sink the value of lands, and tend to the ruin of the trade and woollen manufactures of this realm; for the prevention whereof and for the encouragement of the woollen manufactures in this kingdom, &c.
The ruinous consequences of the woollen manufactures of Ireland to the value of lands, trade, and manufactures of England, stated in this Act, are apprehensions that were entertained, and not events that had happened; and before those facts are taken for granted, I request the mischief recited in the Acts[353] made in England to prevent the importation of cattle dead or alive from Ireland, may be considered. The mischiefs stated in those several laws are supposed to be as ruinous to England as those recited in the Act of 1699, and yet are now allowed to be groundless apprehensions occasioned by short and mistaken views of the real interests of England. Sir W. Petty[354] demonstrates that the opinion entertained in England at the time of his prohibition of the import of cattle from Ireland was ill-founded; he calls it a strange conceit. If he was now living, he would probably consider the prohibition of our woollen exports as not having a much better foundation.
Connecting this preamble of the Act of 1699, with the speech made from the throne to the parliament of Ireland in the year 1698, with the addresses of both houses in England, and with the prohibition by this and by other Acts, formerly made in England, of exporting wool from Ireland except to that kingdom, the object of this new commercial regulation is obvious. It was to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland and in effect to prohibit the exportation from thence because it was the principal branch of manufacture and trade in England; to induce us to send to them our materials for that manufacture, and that we should be supplied with it by them; and to encourage, as a compensation to Ireland, the linen manufacture, which was not at that time a commercial object of any importance to England. This I take to be a part of the system of colony regulations. Whether it was reasonable or just to bring this kingdom into that system, has been already submitted from arguments drawn from the climates and productions of the different countries. The supposed compensation was no more than what Ireland had before; no further encouragement was given by England to our linen manufacture until six years after this prohibition, when at the request of the Irish House of Commons and after a representation of the ruinous state of the country, liberty was given by an English Act of Parliament[355] to export our white and brown linens into the colonies, which was allowing us to do as to one manufacture what, before the fifteenth of King Charles II., was permitted in every instance.
It would be presumption in a private man to decide on the weight of those arguments; but to select and arrange facts that lie dispersed in journals and books of Statutes in both kingdoms, and to make observations on those facts with caution and respect, can never give offence to those who inquire for the purpose of relieving a distressed nation and of promoting the general welfare. In that confidence I beg leave to place this subject in a different view, and to request that it may be considered what the commercial system of this kingdom was at the time of passing this law of 1699, and whether it was, in this respect, reasonable or just that such a regulation should have been then made? The great object which the Lords and Commons of Great Britain have determined to investigate led to such a discussion; determined as they are to pursue effectual methods “for promoting the common strength, wealth, and commerce of both kingdoms.” What better guides can they follow than the examples of their ancestors and the means used by them for many centuries, and in the happiest times, for attaining the same great purposes.
In my opinion it would be improper, in the present state of the British Empire, to agitate disputed questions that may inflame the passions of men. May no such questions ever arise between two affectionate sister kingdoms. It is my purpose only to state acknowledged facts, which never have been contested, and from those facts to lay before you the commercial system of Ireland before the year 1699.
For several centuries before this period Ireland was in possession of the English Common law[356] and of Magna Charta. The former secures the subject in the enjoyment of property of every kind; and by the latter the liberties of all the ports of the kingdom are established.
The Statutes made in England for the common and public weal are,[357] by an Irish Act of the 10th of Henry VII., made laws in Ireland; and the English Commercial Statutes, in which Ireland is expressly mentioned, will place the former state of commerce in this country in a light very different from that in which it has been generally considered in Great Britain.
By the 17th of Edward III., ch. 1, all sorts of merchandises may be exported from Ireland, except to the King’s enemies.
By the 27th of Edward III., ch. 18, merchants of Ireland and Wales may bring their merchandise to the staple of England; and by the 34th of the same king, ch. 17, all kinds of merchandises may be exported from and imported into Ireland, as well by aliens as denizens. In the same year there is another Statute, ch. 18, that all persons who have lands or possessions in Ireland might freely import thither and export from that kingdom their own commodities; and by the 50th of Edward III., ch. 8, no alnage is to be paid, if frieze ware, which are made in Ireland.
This freedom of commerce was beneficial to both countries. It enabled Ireland to be very serviceable to Edward III., as it had been to his father and grandfather, in supplying numbers of armed vessels for transporting their great lords and their attendants and troops[358] to Scotland and also to Portsmouth for his French wars.
But the reign of Edward IV. furnishes still stronger instances of the regard shown by England to the trade and manufactures of this country.
In the third year of that monarch’s reign the artificers of England complained to parliament that they were greatly impoverished, and could not live by bringing in divers commodities and wares ready wrought.[359] An Act passed reciting those complaints, and ordaining that no merchant born a subject of the king, denisen or stranger, or other person, should bring into England or Wales any woollen cloths, &c., and enumerates many other manufactures on pain of forfeiture, provided that all wares and “chaffers” made and wrought in Ireland or Wales may be brought in and sold in the realm of England, as they were wont before the making of that Act.[360]
In the next year another Act[361] passed in that kingdom, that all woollen cloth brought into England, and set to sale, should be forfeited, except cloths made in Wales or Ireland.
In those reigns England was as careful of the commerce and manufactures of her ancient sister kingdom, particularly in her great staple trade, as she was of her own.
Of this attention there were further instances in the years 1468 and 1478. In two treaties concluded in those years between England and the Duke of Bretagne, the merchandise to be traded in between England, Ireland, and Calais on the one part, and Bretagne on the other, is specified, and woollen cloths are particularly mentioned.[362]
And in a treaty between Henry VII. and the Netherlands, Ireland is included, both as to exports and imports.[363]
The commercial Acts of Parliament in which Ireland is mentioned have only been stated, because they are not generally known. But the laws made in England before the 10th Henry VII. for the protection of merchants and the security of trade, being laws for the common and public weal, are also made laws here by the Irish statute of that year, which was returned under the great seal of England, and must have been previously considered in the privy council of that kingdom. At this period, then, 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, was also the same.
From that time until the 15th of King Charles II., which takes in a period of 167 years, the commercial constitution of Ireland was as much favoured and protected as that of England. “The free enlargement of common traffic which his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland enjoyed,” is taken notice of incidentally in an English statute, in the reign of King James I.,[364] and in 1627, King Charles I. made a strong declaration in favour of the trade and manufactures of this country. By several English statutes in the reign of King Charles II., an equal attention was shown to the woollen manufactures in both kingdoms; in the 12th year of his reign[365] the exportation of wool, wool-felts, fuller’s earth, or any kind of scowering earth, was prohibited from both. But let the reasons mentioned in the preamble for passing this law be adverted to: “For preventing inconveniences and losses that happened, and that daily do and may happen, to the kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, and kingdom of Ireland, through the secret exportation of wool out of and from the said kingdoms and dominions; and for the better setting on work the poor people and inhabitants of the kingdoms and dominions aforesaid, and to the intent that the full use and benefit of the principal native commodities of the same kingdom and dominion may come, redound, and be unto the subjects and inhabitants of the same.”
This was the voice of nature, and the dictate of sound and general 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.
The shipping and navigation of England and Ireland were at this time equally favoured and protected. By another Act of the same year no goods or commodities[366] of the growth, production or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America, shall be imported into England, Ireland, or Wales, but in ships which belong to the people of England or Ireland, the dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, or which are of the built of the said lands, and of which the master and three-fourths of the mariners are English; and a subsequent statute[367] makes the encouragement to navigation in both countries equal, by ordaining that the subjects of Ireland and of the Plantations shall be accounted English within the meaning of that clause. Another law[368] of the same reign shows that the navigation, commerce, and woollen manufactures of both kingdoms were equally protected by the English legislature. This Act lays on the same restraint as the above-mentioned Act of the 12th of Charles II., and makes the transgression still more penal. It recites that wool, wool-felts, &c., are secretly exported from England and Ireland to foreign parts to the great decay of the woollen manufactures, and the destruction of the navigation and commerce of these kingdoms.
From those laws it appears that the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this country were not only favoured and protected by the English legislature, but that we had in those times the full benefit of their Plantation trade; whilst the woollen manufactures were protected and encouraged in England and Ireland, the planting of tobacco in both was prohibited, because “it was one of the main products of several of the Plantations, and upon which their welfare and subsistence do depend.”[369]
This policy was liberal, just, and equal; it opened the resources and cultivated the strength of every part of the empire.
This commercial system of Ireland was enforced by several Acts of her own legislature; two statutes passed in the reign of Henry VIII. to prevent the exportation of wool, because, says the first of those laws, “it hath been the cause of dearth of cloth and idleness of many folks,”[370] and “tends to the desolation and ruin of this poor land.” The second of those laws enforces the prohibition[371] by additional penalties; it recites “that the said beneficial law had taken little effect, but that since the making thereof great plenty of wool had been conveyed out of this land to the great and inestimable hurt, decay, and impoverishment of the King’s poor subjects within the said land, for redress whereof, and in consideration that conveying of the wool of the growth of this land out of the same is one of the greatest occasions of the idleness of the people, waste, ruin, and desolation of the King’s cities and borough towns, and other places of his dominion within this land.” The 11th of Elizabeth[372] lays duties on the exportation equal to a prohibition, and the reason given in the preamble ought to be mentioned: “That the said commodities may be more abundantly wrought in this realm ere they shall be so transported than presently they are, which shall set many now living idle on work, to the great relief and commodity of this realm.[373]
By the preamble of one of those Acts,[374] made in the reign of Charles II., it appears that the sale of Irish woollen goods in foreign markets was encouraged by England, “whereas there is a general complaint in England, France, and other parts beyond the seas (whither the woollen cloths and other commodities made of wool in this, his Majesty’s kingdom of Ireland, are transported) of the false, deceitful, uneven, and uncertain making thereof, which cometh to pass by reason that the clothiers and makers thereof do not observe any certain assize for length, breadth, and weight for making their clothes and other commodities aforesaid in this kingdom, as they do in the realm of England, and as they ought also to do here, by which means the merchants, buyers, and users of the said cloth and other commodities are much abused and deceived, and the credit, esteem, and sale of the said cloth and commodities is thereby much impaired and undervalued, to the great and general hurt and hindrance of the trade of clothing in this whole realm.”
After the ports of England were shut against our cattle, and our trade to the English colonies was restrained, still this commercial system was adhered to by encouraging the manufactures of this country, and the exportation of them to foreign countries. In 1667, when the power of the Crown was not so well understood as at present, the proclamation before mentioned was published by the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council of Ireland,[375] in pursuance of a letter from Charles II., by the advice of his council in England, notifying to all his subjects of this kingdom the allowance of a free trade to all foreign countries, either at war or peace with his Majesty.
In the year 1663 the distinction between the trade of England and Ireland,[376] and the restraints on that of the latter commenced. By an English Act passed in that year, entitled an Act “for the encouragement of trade,” a title not very applicable to the parts of it that related to Ireland; besides laying a prohibition on cattle imported into England from that kingdom, the exportation of all commodities except victuals, servants, horses, and salt for the fisheries of New England and Newfoundland, from thence to the English plantations, was prohibited from the 25th March, 1764. The exports allowed were useful to them, but prejudicial to Ireland, as they consisted of our people, our provisions, and a material for manufacture which we might have used more profitably on our own coasts.
In 1670, another Act[377] passed in England to prohibit from the 24th of March, 1671, the exportation from the English plantations to Ireland of several materials for manufactures[378] without first unloading in England or Wales. We are informed by this Act that the restraint of the exportation from the English plantations to Ireland was intended by the Act of 1663; but the intention is not effectuated, though the importation of those commodities into Ireland from England, without first unloading there is, in effect, prohibited by that Act.
The prohibition of importing into Ireland any plantation goods, unless the same had been first landed in England, and had paid the duties, is made general, without any exception, by the English Act of the 7th and 8th W. III., ch. 22.
But by subsequent British Acts[379] it is made lawful to import from his Majesty’s plantations all goods of their growth or manufactures, the articles enumerated in those several Acts excepted.[380]
By a late British Act[381] there is a considerable extension of the exports from Ireland to the British plantations. But it is apprehended that this law will not answer the kind intentions of the British legislature. Denying the import from those countries to Ireland is, in effect, preventing the export from Ireland to those countries. Money cannot be expected for our goods there, we must take theirs in exchange; and this can never answer on the terms of our being obliged, in our return, to pass by Ireland, to land those goods in England, to ship them a second time, and then to sail back again to Ireland. No trade will bear such an unnecessary delay and expense. The quickness and the security of the return are the great inducements to every trade. One is lost and the other hazarded by such embarrassments; those who are not subject to them carry on the trade with such advantages over those who are so entangled as totally to exclude them from it. This is no longer the subject of speculation, it has been proved by the experience of above seventy years. Since the year 1705, when liberty was given to import white and brown linen from Ireland into the English plantations, the quantities sent there directly from Ireland were at all times very inconsiderable notwithstanding this liberty; they were sent for the most part from Ireland to England before any bounty was given on the exportation from thence, which did not take place until the year 1743; and from England the English plantations were supplied. There cannot be a more decisive proof that the liberty of exporting without a direct import in return, will not be beneficial to Ireland.
This country is the part of the British empire most conveniently situated for trade with the colonies. If not suffered to have any beneficial intercourse with them, she will be deprived of one of the great advantages of her situation; and such an obstruction to the prosperity of so considerable a part must necessarily diminish the strength of the whole British empire.
Those laws laid Ireland under restraints highly prejudicial to her commerce and navigation. From those countries the materials for ship-building[382] and some of those used in perfecting their staple manufactures were had; Ireland was, by those laws, excluded from almost all the trade of three quarters of the globe, and from all direct beneficial intercourse with her fellow-subjects in those countries, which were partly stocked from her own loins. But still, though deprived at that time of the benefit of those colonies, she was not then considered as a colony herself, her manufacturers were not in any other manner discouraged, her ports were left open, and she was at liberty to look for a market among strangers, though not among her fellow-subjects in Asia, Africa, or America.[383] By the law of 1699 she was, as to her staple manufacture, deprived of those resources; she was brought within a system of colonisation, but on worse terms than any of the plantations who were allowed to trade with each other.[384]
She could send her principal materials for manufacture to England only; but those manufactures were encouraged in England and discouraged in Ireland. The probable consequence of which was, and the event has answered the expectation, that we should take those manufactures from that country; and that, therefore, in those various trades which employ the greatest numbers of men, the English should work for our people; the rich should work for the poor.
Let the histories of both kingdoms, and the statute books of both parliaments be examined, and no precedent will be found for the Act of 1699, or for the system which it introduced.
The whole tenor of the English statutes relative to the trade of this country, and which, by our Act of the 10th of Henry VII., became a part of our commercial constitution, breathe a spirit totally repugnant to the principle of that law; and it is, therefore, with the utmost deference, submitted to those who have the power to decide whether this law was agreeable to the commercial constitution of Ireland, which, for 500 years, has never produced a similar instance.
It might be naturally supposed, by a person not versed in our story, that in the seventeenth century there had been some offence given or some demerit on our part. He would be surprised to hear that during this period our loyalty had been exemplary, and our sufferings on that account great. In 1641, great numbers of the Protestants of Ireland were destroyed, and many of them were deprived of their property and driven out of their country from their attachment to the English Government in this kingdom, and to that religion and constitution which they happily enjoyed under it. At the Revolution they were constant in the same principles, and successfully staked their lives and properties against domestic and foreign enemies in support of the rights of the English crown, and of the religious and civil liberties of Britain and of Ireland. They bravely shared with her in all her dangers, and liberally partook of all her adversities. Whatever were their rights, they had forfeited none of them. Whatever favours they enjoyed, they had new claims from their merit and their sufferings to a continuance of them. They now wanted more than ever the care of that fostering hand which, by rescuing them twice from oppression (obligations never to be forgotton by the Protestants of Ireland), established the liberties, confirmed the strength, and raised the glory of the British empire.
In speaking of a commercial system, it is not intended to touch upon the power of making or altering laws; the present subject leads us only to consider whether that power has been exercised in any instances contrary to reason, justice, and public utility.
When we consider, with the utmost deference to established authority, what is reasonable, useful, and just, principles equally applicable to an independent or a subordinate, to a rich or a poor country: Quod æque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus æque. Should any man talk of a conquest above 500 years since, between kingdoms long united like those, in blood, interest, and constitution, he does not speak to the purpose; he may as well talk of the conquest of the Norman, and use the antiquated language of obsolete despotism. I revere that conquest which has given to Ireland the common law and the Magna Charta of England.
When we consider what is reasonable, useful, and just, and address our sentiments to a nation renowned for wisdom and justice, should pride pervert the question, talk of the power of Britain, and, in the character of that great country, ask, like Tancred, who shall control me? I answer, like the sober Siffredi—thyself.
The power of regulating trade in a great empire is perverted, when exercised for the destruction of trade in any part of it; but whatever or wherever that power is, if it says to the subject on one side of a channel, you may work and navigate, buy and sell; and to the subject on the other side, you shall not work or navigate, buy or sell, but under such restrictions as will extinguish the genius and unnerve the arm of industry; I will only say that it uses a language repugnant to the free spirit of commerce, and of the British and Irish constitution.
Great eulogiums on the virtues of our people have been pronounced by some of the most respected English authors.[385] Yet indolence is objected to them by those who discourage their industry; but they do not reflect that each of these proceeds from habit, and that the noble observation made on virtue in general is equally applicable to industry; the day that it loses its liberty half of its vigour is gone.[386]
The great expenditure of money by England on account of this country is an argument more fit for the limited views of a compting-house than for the enlarged policy of statesmen deliberating on the general good of a great empire.
Very large sums, it is true, were advanced by England for the relief and recovery of Ireland; but these have been reimbursed fifty-fold by the profits and advantages which have since arisen to England from its trade and intercourse with this kingdom. This argument may be further pursued, but accounts of mutual benefits between intimate friends and near relations should always be kept open, and every attempt to strike a balance between them tends rather to raise jealousies than to promote good will.
It has been said that the interest of England required that those restraints should be imposed. The contrary has been shown; one of the maxims of her own law instructs us to enjoy our own property, so as not to injure that of our neighbour,[387] and the true interest of a great country lies in the population, wealth, and strength of the whole empire.
If this restrictive system was founded in justice and sound policy towards the middle and at the conclusion of the last century, the present state of the British empire requires new counsels and a system of commerce and of policy totally different from those which the circumstances of these countries, in the years 1663, 1670, and 1698, might have suggested.
But it is time to give your lordship a little relief before I enter into a new part of my subject.
I have the honour to be, My lord, &c.
Eighth Letter.
Dublin, 6th September, 1779.
My Lord,
Between the 23rd of October, 1641, and the same day in the year 1652, five hundred and four thousand of the inhabitants of Ireland are said to have perished and been wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship, and banishment.[388] If it had not been for the numbers of British which those wars had brought over,[389] and such who, either as adventurers or soldiers, seated themselves here on account of the satisfaction made to them in lands, the country had been, by the rebellion of 1641 and the plague that followed it, nearly desolate. At the restoration almost the whole property of the kingdom was in a state of the utmost anarchy and confusion. To satisfy the clashing interests of the numerous claimants, and to determine the various and intricate disputes that arose relative to titles, required a considerable length of time. Peace and settlement, or, to use the words of one of the Acts of Parliament[390] of that time, the repairing the ruins and desolation of the kingdom were the great objects of this period.
The English law[391] of 1663, restraining the exportation from Ireland to America, was at that time, and for some years after, scarcely felt in this kingdom, which had then little to export except live cattle, not proper for so distant a market.
The Act of Settlement, passed in Ireland the year before this restrictive law, and the explanatory statute for the settlement of this kingdom, was not enacted until two years after. The country continued for a considerable time in a state of litigation, which is never favourable to industry. In 1661, the people must have been poor; the number of them of all degrees who paid poll money in that year was about 360,000.[392] In 1672, when the country had greatly improved, the manufacture bestowed upon a year’s exportation from Ireland did not exceed eight thousand pounds,[393] and the clothing trade had not then arrived to what it had been before the last rebellion. But still the kingdom had much increased in wealth, though not in manufactured exports. The customs which set in 1656 for £12,000 yearly were, in 1672, worth £80,000[394] yearly, and the improvement in domestic wealth, that is to say, in building, planting, furniture, coaches, &c., is said to have advanced from 1652 to 1673 in a proportion of from one to four. Sir William Petty, in the year 1672, complains not of the restraints on the exportation from Ireland to America,[395] but of the prohibition of exporting our cattle to England, and of our being obliged to unlade in that kingdom[396] the ships bound from America to Ireland, the latter regulation he considers as highly prejudicial to this country.[396]
The immediate object of Ireland at this time seems to have been to get materials to employ her people at home, without thinking of foreign exportations. When we advanced in the export of our woollen goods the law of 1663,[397] which excluded them from the American markets, must have been a great loss to this kingdom; and after we were allowed to export our linens to the British colonies in America, the restraints imposed by the law of 1670 upon our importations from thence became more prejudicial, and will be much more so if ever the late extension of our exports to America should under those restraints have any effect. For it is certainly a great discouragement to the carrying on trade with any country where we are allowed only to sell our manufactures and produce, but are not permitted to carry from them directly to our own country their principal manufactures or produce. The people to whom we are thus permitted to sell want the principal inducement for dealing with us, and the great spring of commerce, which is mutual exchange, is wanting between us.
As the British legislature has thought it reasonable to extend, to a very considerable degree, our exportation to their colonies, and has, doubtless, intended that this favour should be useful to Ireland, it is hoped that those restraints on the importation from thence, which must render that favour of little effect, will be no longer continued.
From those considerations it is evident that many strong reasons respecting Ireland are now to be found against the continuance of those restrictive laws of 1663 and 1670, that did not exist at the time of making them.
The prohibition of 1699 was immediately and universally felt in this country; but in the course of human events various and powerful reasons have arisen against the continuance of that statute, which did not exist, and could not have been foreseen when it was enacted.
At the Restoration the inhabitants of Ireland consisted of three different nations—English, Scotch, and Irish—divided by political and religious principles, exasperated against each other by former animosities, and by present contests for property. When the settlement of the country was completed, the people became industrious, manufactures greatly increased, and the kingdom began to flourish. The prohibition of exporting cattle to England, and perhaps that of importing directly from America the materials of other manufactures, obliged the Irish to increase and to manufacture their own material. They made so great a progress in both, from 1672 to 1687, that in the latter year the exports of the woollen manufacture alone amounted in value to £70,521 14s. 0d.
But the religious and civil animosities continued. The papists objected to the settlement of property made after the Restoration,[398] wished to reverse the outlawries, and to rescind the laws on which that settlement was founded, hoped to establish their own as the national religion, to get the power of the kingdom into their own hands, and to effect all those purposes by a king of their own religion. They endeavoured to attain all those objects by laws[399] passed at a meeting which they called a parliament, held under this prince after his abdication; and by their conduct at this period, as well as in the year 1642,[400] showed dispositions unfavourable to the subordination of Ireland to the Crown of England. They could not be supposed to be well affected to that great prince who defeated all their purposes.
At the time of the revolution the numbers of our people were again very much reduced; but a great majority of the remaining inhabitants consisted of papists. Those, notwithstanding their disappointment at that era, were thought to entertain expectations of the restoration of their Popish king, and designs unfavourable to the established constitution in Church and State. It is not to the present purpose to inquire how long this disposition prevailed. It cannot be doubted but that this was the opinion conceived of their views and principles at the time of passing this law in the year 1699.
England could not then consider a country under such unfortunate circumstances as any great additional strength to it. Foreign Protestants were invited to settle in it, and the emigration of papists in great numbers to other countries was allowed, if not encouraged. Though at this period a regard to liberty as well as to economy, occasioned the disbanding of all the army in England, except 7,000, it was thought necessary for the security of Ireland that an army of 12,000 men should be kept there; and for many years afterwards it was not allowed that this army should be recruited in this kingdom. This distinction of parties in Ireland was in those times the mainspring in every movement relative to that kingdom, and affected not only political but commercial regulations. The reason assigned by the English statute, allowing the exportation of Irish linen cloth to the plantations, is, after reciting the restrictive law of 1663,[401] “yet, forasmuch as the Protestant interest of Ireland ought to be supported, by giving the utmost encouragement to the linen manufactures of that kingdom, in tender regard to her Majesty’s good Protestant subjects of her said kingdom, be it enacted,” &c.
The papists, then disabled from acquiring permanent property in lands, had not the same interest with Protestants in the defence of their country and in the prosperity of the British Empire. But those seeds of disunion and diffidence no longer remain. No man looks now for the return of the exiled family any more than for that of Perken Warbec; and the repeal of Magna Charta is as much expected as of the Act of Settlement. The papists, indulged with the exercise of their religious worship, and now at liberty to acquire permanent property in lands, are interested as well as Protestants in the security and prosperity of this country; and sensible of the benign influence of our Sovereign, and of the protection and happiness which they enjoy under his reign, seem to be as well affected to the King and to the constitution of the State as any other class of subjects, and at this most dangerous crisis have contributed their money to raise men for his Majesty’s service, and declared their readiness, had the laws permitted, to have taken arms for the defence of their country. They owe much to the favour and protection of the Crown, and to the liberal and benevolent spirit of the British legislature which led the way to their relief, and they are peculiarly interested to cultivate the good opinion of their Sovereign, and of their fellow-subjects in Great Britain.
The numbers of our people, since the year 1698, are more than doubled; but in point of real strength to the British Empire are increased in a proportion of above eight to one. In the year 1698 the numbers of our people did not much, if at all, exceed one million. Of these 300,000 are thought to be a liberal allowance for Protestants of all denominations. It is now supposed that there are not less in this kingdom than 2,500,000 loyal and affectionate subjects to his Majesty, and well affected to the constitution and happiness of their country.
A political and commercial constitution, if it could have been considered as wisely framed for the years 1663, 1670, and 1698, ought to be reconsidered in the year 1779; what might have been good and necessary policy in the government of one million of men disunited among themselves, and a majority of them not to be relied upon in support of their king and of the laws and constitution of their country, is bad policy in the government of two millions and a-half of men now united among themselves, and all interested in the support of the Crown, the laws, and the constitution.
What might have been sufficient employment, and the means of acquiring a competent subsistence for one million of people, when a man, by working two days in the week, might have earned a sufficient support for him and his family, will never answer for two millions and a-half of people,[402] when the hard labour of six days in the week can scarcely supply a scanty subsistence. Nor can the resources which enabled us in the last century to remit £200,000 yearly to England[403] support remittances to the amount of more than six times that sum.
Let the reasons for this restrictive system at the time of its formation be examined, and let us judge impartially whether any one of the purposes then intended has been answered. The reasons respecting America were to confine the Plantation trade to England, and to make that country a storehouse of all commodities for its colonies. But the commercial jealousy that has prevailed among the different states of Europe has made it difficult for any nation to keep great markets to herself in exclusion of the rest of the world. It was not foreseen at those periods that the colonies, whilst they all continued dependent, should have traded with foreign nations, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Great Britain to prevent it. It was not foreseen that those colonies would have refused to have taken any commodities whatever from their parent country, that they should afterwards have separated themselves from her empire, declared themselves independent, resisted her fleets and armies, obtained the most powerful alliances, and occasioned the most dangerous and destructive war in which Great Britain was ever engaged. Nor could it have been foreseen that Ireland, excluded from almost all direct intercourse with them, should have been nearly undone by the contest. The reasons then respecting America no longer exist, and whatever may be the event of the conflict, will never exist to the extent expected when this system of restraints and penalties was adopted.
The reasons relating to Ireland have failed also. The circumstances of this country relative to the woollen manufacture are totally changed since the year 1699. The Lords and Commons of England appear to have founded the law of that year on the proportion which they supposed that the charge of the woollen manufacture in England then bore to the charge of that manufacture in Ireland. In the representation from the Commissioners of Trade, laid before both houses,[404] they think it a reasonable conjecture to take the difference between both wool and labour in the two countries to be one-third; and estimating on that supposition, they find that 43⅞ per cent. may be laid on broadcloth exported out of Ireland, more than on the like cloth exported out of England, to bring them both to an equality. This must have been an alarming representation to England.
But if those calculations were just at the time, which is very doubtful, the supposed facts on which they were founded do certainly no longer exist. Wool is now generally at a higher price in Ireland than in England, and the trifling difference in the price of labour is more than overbalanced by this and the other circumstances in favour of England, which have been before stated; and that those facts supposed in 1698, and the inferences drawn from them, have no foundation in the present state of this country is plain from the experience every day, which shows that instead of our underselling the English, they undersell us in our own markets.
Besides our exclusion from foreign markets, England had two objects in the discouragement of our woollen trade.
It was intended that Ireland should send her wool to England, and take from that country her woollen manufactures.[405] It has been already shown that the first object has not been attained, the second has been carried so far as, for the future, to defeat its own purpose. Whilst our own manufacturers were starving for want of employment, and our wool sold for less than one-half its usual price, we have imported from England, in the years 1777 and 1778, woollen goods to the enormous amount of £715,740 13s. 0d., as valued at our Custom House, and of the manufactures of linen, cotton, and silk mixed, to the amount of £98,086 1s. 11d., making in the whole in those two years of distress, £813,826 14s. 11d.[406] Between 20 and 30,000 of our manufacturers in those branches were in those two years supported by public charity. From this fact it is hoped that every reasonable man will allow the necessity of our using our own manufactures. Agreements among our people for this purpose are not, as it has been supposed, a new idea in this country. It was never so universal as at present, but has been frequently resorted to in times of distress. In the sessions of 1703, 1705, and 1707,[407] the House of Commons resolved unanimously, that it would greatly conduce to the relief of the poor and the good of the kingdom, that the inhabitants thereof should use none other but the manufactures of this kingdom in their apparel and the furniture of their houses; and in the last of those sessions the members engaged their honours to each other, that they would conform to the said resolution. The not importing goods from England is one of the remedies recommended by the council of trade in 1676, for alleviating some distress that was felt at that time;[408] and Sir William Temple, a zealous friend to the trade and manufactures of England, recommends to Lord Essex, then Lord Lieutenant, “to introduce, as far as can be, a vein of parsimony throughout the country in all things that are not perfectly the native growths and manufactures.”[409]
The people of England cannot reasonably object to a conduct of which they have given a memorable example.[410] In 1697 the English House of Lords presented an address to King William to discourage the use and wearing of all sorts of furniture and cloths, not of the growth or manufacture of that kingdom; and beseech him by his royal example effectually to encourage the use and wearing of all sorts of furniture and wearing cloths that are the growth of that kingdom, or manufactured there; and King William assures them that he would give the example to his subjects,[411] and would endeavour to make it effectually followed. The reason assigned by the Lords for this address was that the trade of the nation had suffered by the late long and expensive war. But it does not appear that there was any pressing necessity at the time, or that their manufacturers were starving for want of employment.
Common sense must discover to every man that, where foreign trade is restrained, discouraged, or prevented in any country, and where that country has the materials of manufactures, a fruitful soil, and numerous inhabitants, the home-trade is its best resource. If this is thought, by men of great knowledge, to be the most valuable of all trades,[412] because it makes the speediest and the surest returns, and because it increases at the same time two capitals in the same country, there is no nation on the globe whose wealth, population, strength, and happiness would be promoted by such a trade in a greater degree than ours.[413]
Two other reasons were assigned for this prohibition: that the Irish had shown themselves unwilling to promote the linen manufacture,[414] and that there were great quantities of wool in Ireland. But they have since cultivated the linen trade with great success, and great numbers of their people are employed in it. Of late years by the operation of the land-carriage bounty, agriculture has increased in a degree never before known in this country; extensive tracts of lands, formerly sheep-pasture, are now under tillage, and much greater rents are given for that purpose than can be paid by stocking with sheep; the quantity of wool is greatly diminished from what it was in the year 1699, supposing it to have been then equal to the quantity in 1687,[415] it has been for several years lessening, and is not likely to be increased. In those two important circumstances the grounds of the apprehensions of England have ceased, and the state of Ireland has been materially altered since the year 1699.
Another reason respecting England and foreign States, particularly France, has failed. England was, in 1698, in possession of the woollen trade in most of the foreign markets, and expected still to continue to supply them, as appears by the preamble of her Statute passed in that year.
She at that time expected to keep this manufacture to herself. The people of Leeds, Halifax, and Newberry,[416] petition the House of Commons “that by some means the woollen manufacture may be prevented from being set up in foreign countries;” and the Commons, in their address, mention the keeping it as much as possible entire to themselves. But experience has proved the vanity of those expectations; several other countries cultivate this trade with success. France now undersells her. England has lost some of those markets, and it is thought probable that Ireland, if admitted to them, might have preserved and may now recover the trade that England has lost.
A perseverance in this restrictive policy will be ruinous to the trade of Great Britain. Whatever may be the state of America, great numbers of the inhabitants of Ireland, if the circumstances of this country shall continue to be the same as at present in respect of trade, will emigrate there; this will give strength to that part of the empire on which Great Britain can least, and take it from that part on which at present she may most securely depend. But this is not all the mischief; those emigrants will be mostly manufacturers, and will transfer to America the woollen and linen manufactures, to the great prejudice of those trades in England, Scotland, and Ireland; and then one of the means used to keep the colonies dependent by introducing this country into a system of colonisation, will be the occasion of lessening, if not dissolving, the connection between them and their parent State.
Great Britain, weakened in her extremities, should fortify the heart of her empire; Great Britain, with powerful foreign enemies united in lasting bonds against her, and with scarcely any foreign alliance to sustain her, should exert every possible effort to strengthen herself at home. The number of people in Ireland have more than doubled in fourscore years. How much more rapid would be the increase if the growth of the human race was cherished by finding sufficient employment and food for this prolific nation! it would probably double again in half a century. What a vast accession of strength such numbers of brave and active men, living almost within the sound of a trumpet, must bring to Great Britain, now said to be decreasing considerably in population!—a greater certainty than double those numbers dispersed in distant parts of the globe, the expense of defending and governing of which must at all times be great. Sir W. Temple,[417] in 1673, takes notice of the circumstances prejudicial to the trade and riches of Ireland, which had hitherto, he says, made it of more loss than value to England. They have already been mentioned. The course of time has removed some of them, and the wisdom and philanthropy of Britain may remove the rest. “Without these circumstances (says that honest and able statesman), the native fertility of the soils and seas, in so many rich commodities, improved by multitudes of people and industry, with the advantage of so many excellent havens, and a situation so commodious for all sorts of foreign trade, must needs have rendered this kingdom one of the richest in Europe, and made a mighty increase both of strength and revenue to the crown of England.”[418]
During this century, Ireland has been, without exaggeration, a mine of wealth to England, far beyond what any calculation has yet made it. When poor and thinly inhabited she was an expense and a burden to England; when she had acquired some proportion of riches and grew more numerous, she was one of the principal sources of her wealth. When she becomes poor again, those advantages are greatly diminished. The exports from Great Britain to Ireland, in 1778,[419] were less than the medium value of the four preceding years in a sum of £634,444 3s. 0d; and in the year 1779, Great Britain is obliged, partly at her own expense, to defend this country, and for that purpose has generously bestowed out of her own exchequer a large sum of money. Those facts demonstrate that the poverty of Ireland ever has been a drain, and her riches an influx of wealth to England, to which the greater part of it will ever flow, and it imports not to that country through what channel; but the source must be cleared from obstructions, or the stream cannot continue to flow.
Such a liberal system would increase the wealth of this kingdom by means that would strengthen the hands of government, and promote the happiness of the people. Ireland would be then able to contribute largely to the support of the British Empire, not only from the increase of her wealth, but from the more equal distribution of it into a greater number of hands among the various orders of the community. The present inability of Ireland arises principally from this circumstance, that her lower and middle classes have little or no property, and are not able, to any considerable amount, either to pay taxes or consume those commodities that are the usual subjects of them; and this has been the consequence of the laws which prevent trade and discourage manufactures. The same quantity of property distributed through the different classes of the people would supply resources much superior to those which can be found in the present state of Ireland.[420] The increase of people there under its present restraints makes but a small addition to the resources of the State in respect of taxes.[421] In 1685, the amount of the inland excise in Ireland was £75,169. In 1762, it increased only to £92,842. Those years are taken as periods of a considerable degree of prosperity in Ireland. The people had increased, from 1685 to 1762, in a proportion of nearly 7 to 4,[422] which appears from this circumstance, that in 1685 hearth-money amounted to £32,659, and in 1762 to £56,611. At the former period the law made to restrain and discourage the principal trade and manufacture of Ireland had not been made. There were then vast numbers of sheep in Ireland, and the woollen manufacture was probably in a flourishing state. At the former of those periods the lower classes of the people were able to consume excisable commodities; in the latter they lived for the most part on the immediate produce of the soil. The numbers of people in a state, like those of a private family, if the individuals have the means of acquiring, add to the wealth, and if they have not those means, to the poverty of the community. Population is not always a proof of the prosperity of a nation; the people may be very numerous and very poor and wretched. A temperate climate, fruitful soil, bays and rivers well stocked with fish, the habits of life among the lower classes, and a long peace, are sufficient to increase the numbers of people: these are the true wealth of every state that has wisdom to encourage the industry of its inhabitants, and a country which supplies in abundance the materials for that industry. If the state or the family should discourage industry, and not allow one of the family to work, because another is of the same trade, the consequences to the great or the little community must be equally fatal.
Is there not business enough in this great world for the people of two adjoining islands, without depressing the inhabitants of one of them? Let the magnanimity and philanthropy of Great Britain address her poor sister kingdom in the same language which the good-natured Uncle Toby uses to the fly in setting it at liberty:—“Poor fly; there’s room enough for thee and me.”
I have the honour to be, My Lord, &c.
Ninth Letter.
Dublin, 10th Sept., 1779.
My Lord,
Besides those already mentioned, various other commercial restraints and prohibitions give the British trader and manufacturer many great and important advantages over the Irish. Whilst our markets are at all times open to all their productions and manufactures, with inconsiderable duties on the import, their markets are open or shut against us as suits their conveniency. On several articles of the first importance, and on almost all our own manufactures imported into Great Britain, duties are imposed equal to a prohibition. In the instance of woollen goods, theirs in our ports pay but a small duty; ours in their ports are loaded with duties[423] which amount to a prohibition.[424] Theirs on the exportation are subject to no duty; ours, if permitted to be exported, would, as the law now stands, be subject to a duty[425] over and above that payable for alnage and for the alnager’s fee. If the Act of 1699 was repealed, the English would still have many great advantages over us in the woollen trade.
In our staple manufacture, the bounties given on the exportation of white and brown Irish linen from Great Britain would still continue that trade in the hands of the British merchant. On all coloured linens a duty[426] equal to a prohibition is imposed on the importation into Great Britain; but theirs, imported to us, are subject[427] to ten per cent., and under that duty they have imported considerably. This inequality of duty, and the bounty given by the British Act of the tenth of Geo. III., on the exportation of their chequered and striped linens from Great Britain, secures to them the continuance of the great superiority which they have acquired over us in those very valuable branches of this trade. In many other articles they have given themselves great advantages. Beer they export to us in such quantities as almost to ruin our brewery; but they prevent our exportation to them by duties, laid on the import there, equal to a prohibition. Of malt they make large exports to us, to the prejudice of our agriculture, but have absolutely prohibited our exportation of that commodity to them. Some manufactures they retain solely to themselves, which we are prohibited from exporting, and cannot import from any country but Great Britain, as glass of all kinds. Hops they do not allow us to import from any other place, and in a facetious style of interdiction, pronounce such importation to be a common nuisance.[428] They go further, and by laying a duty on the export, and denying the draw-back, oblige the Irish consumer to pay a tax appropriated, it is said, to the payment of a British debt. I shall make no political, but the subject requires a commercial observation—it is this: the man who keeps a market solely to himself, in exclusion of all others, whether he appears as buyer[429] or seller, fixes his own price, and becomes the arbiter of the profit and loss of every customer.
The various manufactures[430] made or mixed with cotton are subject, by several British Acts, to duties on the importation amounting to 25 per cent.
By another Act, penalties[431] are imposed on wearing any of those manufactures in Great Britain, unless made in that country. Those laws have effectually excluded the Irish manufactures, in all those branches, from the British markets; and it has been already shown that they cannot be sent to the American. From Great Britain into Ireland all those articles are imported in immense quantities, being subject here to duties amounting to 10 per cent. only.
But it would be tedious to descend into a further detail, and disgusting to write a book of rates instead of a letter.[432]
Their superior capitals and expertness give them decisive advantages in every species of trade and manufacture. By the extension of the commerce of Ireland, Great Britain would acquire new and important advantages, not only by the wealth it would bring to that country, and the increase of strength to the empire, but by opening to the British merchant new sources of trade from Ireland.
It is time to draw to a conclusion. I have reviewed my letters to your lordship, for the purpose of avoiding every possible occasion of offence. I flatter myself every reader will discern that they have been written with upright and friendly intentions, not to excite jealousies, but to remove prejudices, to moderate, and conciliate; and that they are intended as an appeal, not to the passions of the multitude, but to the wisdom, justice, and generosity of Britain. Shakespeare could place a tongue in every wound of Cæsar; but Antony meant to inflame; and the only purpose of those letters is to persuade. I have, therefore, not even removed the mantle except where necessity required it.
In extraordinary cases where the facts are stronger than the voice of the pleader, it is not unusual to allow the client to speak for himself. Will you, my lord, one of the leading advocates for Ireland, allow her to address her elder sister, and to state her own case; not in the strains of passion or resentment, nor in the tone of remonstrance, but with a modest enumeration of unexaggerated facts in pathetic simplicity. She will tell her, with a countenance full of affection and tenderness, “I have received from you invaluable gifts—the law of[433] common right, your great charter, and the fundamentals of your constitution. The temple of liberty in your country has been frequently fortified, improved, and embellished; mine, erected many centuries since the perfect model of your own, you will not suffer me to strengthen, secure, or repair; firm and well-cemented as it is, it must moulder under the hand of Time for want of that attention which is due to the venerable fabric.[434] We are connected by the strongest ties of natural affection, common security, and a long interchange of the kindest offices on both sides. But for more than a century you have, in some instances, mistaken our mutual interest. I sent you my herds and my flocks, filled your people with abundance, and gave them leisure to attend to more profitable pursuits than the humble employment of shepherds and of herdsmen. But you rejected my produce,[435] and reprobated this intercourse in terms the most opprobrious. I submitted; the temporary loss was mine, but the perpetual prejudice your own. I incited my children to industry, and gave them my principal materials to manufacture. Their honest labours were attended with moderate success, but sufficient to awaken the commercial jealousy of some of your sons; indulging their groundless apprehensions, you desired my materials, and discouraged the industry of my people. I complied with your wishes, and gave to your children the bread of my own; but the enemies of our race were the gainers. They applied themselves with tenfold increase to those pursuits which were restrained in my people, who would have added to the wealth and strength of your empire what, by this fatal error, you transferred to foreign nations. You held out another object to me with promises of the utmost encouragement. I wanted the means, but I obtained them from other countries, and have long cultivated, at great expense, and with the most unremitted efforts, that species of industry which you recommended. You soon united with another great family, engaged in the same pursuit, which you were also obliged to encourage among them, and afterwards embarked in it yourself, and became my rival in that which you had destined for my principal support. This support is now become inadequate to the increased number of my offspring, many of whom want the means of subsistence. My ports are ever hospitably open for your reception, and shut, whenever your interest requires it, against all others; but yours are, in many instances, barred against me. With your dominions in Asia, Africa, and America my sons were long deprived of all beneficial intercourse, and yet to those colonies I transported my treasures for the payment of your armies, and in a war waged for their defence one hundred thousand of my sons fought by your side.[436] Conquest attended our arms. You gained a great increase of empire and of commerce, and my people a further extension of restraints and prohibitions.[437] In those efforts I have exhausted my strength, mortgaged my territories, and am now sinking under the pressure of enormous debts, contracted from my zealous attachment to your interests, to the extension of your empire, and the increase of your glory. By the present unhappy war for the recovery of those colonies, from which they were long excluded, my children are reduced to the lowest ebb of poverty and distress. It is true you have lately, with the kindest intentions, allowed me an extensive liberty of selling to the inhabitants of those parts of your empire; but they have no inducement to buy, because I cannot take their produce in return. Your liberality has opened a new fountain, but your caution will not suffer me to draw from it. The stream of commerce intended to refresh the exhausted strength of my children flies untasted from their parched lips.
“The common parent of all has been equally beneficent to us both. We both possess in great abundance the means of industry and happiness. My fields are not less fertile nor my harbours less numerous than yours. My sons are not less renowned than your own for valour, justice, and generosity. Many of them are your descendants, and have some of your best blood in their veins. But the narrow policy of man has counteracted the instincts and the bounties of nature. In the midst of those fertile fields some of my children perish before my eyes for want of food, and others fly for refuge to hostile nations.
Suffer no longer, respected sister, the narrow jealousy of commerce to mislead the wisdom and to impair the strength of your state. Increase my resources, they shall be yours, my riches and strength, my poverty and weakness will become your own. What a triumph to our enemies, and what an affliction to me, in the present distracted circumstances of the empire, to see my people reduced by the necessity of avoiding famine, to the resolution of trafficing almost solely with themselves! Great and powerful enemies are combined against you; many of your distant connections have deserted you. Increase your strength at home, open and extend the numerous resources of my country, of which you have not hitherto availed yourself, or allowed me the benefit. Our increased force, and the full exertions of our strength, will be the most effectual means of resisting the combination formed against you by foreign enemies and distant subjects, and of giving new lustre to our crowns, and happiness and contentment to our people.”
APPENDIX.—No. I.
Quantity of Wool, Woollen, and Worsted Yarn exported from Ireland to Great Britain in the following years:—
Years Ending the 25th of March. WOOL. YARN.
Woollen. Worsted.
stones. lbs. stones. lbs. stones. lbs.
1764 10,128 6 9,991 14 139,412 12
1795 17,316 0 13,450 12 149,915 9
1766 21,722 13 7,980 0 152,122 0
1767 48,733 8 7,553 0 151,940 9
1768 28,521 11 11,387 6 157,721 3
1769 3,840 16 5,012 0 131,365 2
1770 2,578 0 3,833 0 117,735 9
1771 2,118 5 4,868 2 139,378 14
1772 2,045 6 5,947 0 115,904 4
1773 1,839 2 — 94,098 10
1774 1,007 11 — 63,920 10
1775 2,007 13 — 78,896 14
1776 1,059 15 — 86,527 0
1777 1,734 7 — 114,703 2
1778 1,665 12 — 122,755 15
APPENDIX.—No. II.
Years Ending the 25th of March. DRAPERY. LINEN COTTON.
New. Old. Silk, mixed manufacture.
Quantity. Value. Quantity. Value. Value.
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
1769 394,553 49,319 3 9 207,117 144,982 8 6 13,402 10 7
1770 462,499 57,812 7 6 249,666 174,766 14 6 20,907 18 2½
1771 362,096 45,262 0 0 217,395 152,176 10 0 20,282 5 8
1772 314,703 39,337 18 9 153,566 107,496 4 0 14,081 15 6½
1773 387,143 48,392 17 6 200,065 147,045 13 6 20,472 7 3½
1774 461,407 57,675 17 6 282,317 197,621 18 0 21,611 10 3¼
1775 465,611 58,201 9 4½ 281,379 196,965 13 0 24,234 16 9½
1776 676,485 84,560 12 6 290,215 203,150 10 0 30,371 16 8½
1777 731,819 91,477 8 9 381,330 266,931 0 0 45,411 3 7
1778 741,426 92,678 6 3 378,077 264,653 18 0 52,675 1 11
APPENDIX.—No. III.
An account of the Quantity of Linen Cloth exported out of Ireland to Great Britain and Plantations, prior to the year 1743.
Years Ending the 25th of March. Linen Cloth exported to
Great Britain. Plantations.
Yards. Yards.
1705 739,278 19,742
1706 1,325,771 62,727
1707 1,847,564 81,037
1708 343,359 29,606
1709 1,539,250 113,939
1710 1,528,185 136,844
1711 1,131,629 89,262
1712 1,320,968 43,011
1713 1,721,003 86,357
1714 2,071,814 91,916
1715 2,000,581 133,752
1716 1,968,568 195,825
1717 2,260,243 151,240
1718 2,120,075 113,790
1719 2,235,357 117,288
1720 2,560,113 69,579
1721 2,398,103 95,488
1722 3,036,431 127,934
1723 4,060,402 112,952
1724 3,767,063 94,816
1725 3,755,430 70,052
1726 4,231,676 117,213
1727 4,596,089 151,977
1728 4,517,152 140,049
1729 3,701,485 183,363
1730 3,821,188 218,220
1731 3,591,316 137,039
1733 4,621,127 129,244
1734 5,194,241 213,250
1735 6,508,748 202,759
1736 6,168,333 262,242
1737 5,758,408 309,827
1738 4,897,169 232,947
1739 5,737,834 197,671
1740 6,403,569 183,471
1741 6,760,025 394,374
1742 6,793,009 244,546