The impracticability of preventing the pernicious practice of running wool is now well understood. Of the thirty-two counties in Ireland nineteen are maritime, and the rest are washed by a number of fine rivers that empty themselves into the sea. Can such an extent of ocean, such a range of coasts, such a multitude of harbours, bays, and creeks, be effectually guarded?
The prohibition of the export of live cattle forced the Irish into the re-establishment of their woollen manufacture; and the restraint of the woollen manufacture was a strong temptation to the running of wool. The severest penalties were enacted, the British legislature, the Government, and House of Commons in Ireland, exerted all possible efforts to remove this growing evil, but in vain, until the lawwas made in Great Britain[297]in 1739 to take off the duties from woollen or bay yarn exported from Ireland, excepting worsted yarn of two or more threads, which has certainly given a considerable check to the running of wool, and has shown that the policy of opening is far more efficacious than that of restraining. The world is become a great commercial society; exclude trade from one channel, and it seldom fails to find another.
To show the absolute necessity of Great Britain’s opening to Ireland some new means of acquiring, let the annual balance of exports and imports returned from the entries in the different custom houses, in favour of Ireland, on all her trade with the whole world, in every year from 1768 to 1778, be compared with the remittances made from Ireland to England in each of those years, it will evidently appear that those remittances could not be made out of that balance. The entries of exports made at custom houses are well known to exceed the real amount of those exports in all countries, and this excess is greater in times of diffidence, when merchants wish to acquire credit by giving themselves the appearance of being great traders.
This balance in favour of Ireland on her generaltrade, appears by those returns to have been, in 1776, £606,190 11s.0¼d.; in 1777, £24,203 3s.10¼d.; in 1778, £386,384 3s.7d.; and, taken at a medium of eleven years, from 1768 to 1778, both inclusive, it amounts to the sum of £605,083 7s.5d.The sums remitted from Ireland to Great Britain for rents, interest of money, pensions, salaries, and profits of offices, amounted, at the lowest computation, from 1768 to 1773, to £1,100,000 yearly;[298]and from 1773, when the tontines were introduced, from which period large sums were borrowed from England, those remittances were considerably increased, and are now not less than between 12 and £13,000 yearly. Ireland then pays to Great Britain double the sum that she collects from the whole world in all the trade which Great Britain allows her. It will be difficult to find a similar instance in the history of mankind.
Those great and constant issues of her wealth without any return, not felt by any other country in such a degree, are reasons for granting advantages to Ireland to supply this consuming waste, instead of depriving her of any which Nature has bestowed.
If any of the resources which have hithertoenabled her to hear this prodigious drain are injurious to the manufactures both of England and Ireland, and highly advantageous to the rivals and enemies of both, is it wise in Great Britain by persevering in an inpracticable system of commercial policy, repugnant to the natural course and order of things, to suffer so very considerable a part of the empire to remain in such a situation?
The experiment of an equal and reasonable system of commerce is worth making; that which has been found the best conductor in philosophy is the surest guide in commerce.
Would you consult persons employed in the trade? They have in one respect an interest opposite to that of the public. To narrow the competition is advantageous to the dealers,[299]but prejudicial to the public. If Edward I. had not preferred the general welfare of his subjects to the interested opinions and petitions of the traders, all merchant traders (who were then mostly strangers) would have been sent away from London,[300]for which purpose the Commons offered him the fiftieth part of their movables.[301]
What was the information given by the trading towns in 1697 and 1698 on the subject of the woollen manufacture of Ireland? Several of their[302]petitions state that the woollen manufacture wasset-upin Ireland, as if it had been lately introduced there; and one of them goes so far as to represent the particular time and manner of introducing it. “Many of the poor of that kingdom,” says this extraordinary petition, “during the late rebellion there, fled into the west of England, where they were put to work in the woollen manufacture to learn that trade; and since the reduction of Irelandendeavours were used to set upthose manufactures there.[303]
Would any man suppose that this could relate to a manufacture in which this kingdom excelled before the time of Edward III., which had been the subject of so many laws in both kingdoms, and which was always cultivated here, and before this rebellion with more success than after it? The trading towns gave accounts totally inconsistent of the state of this manufacture at that time in England: from Exeter it is represented as greatlydecayed and discouraged[304]in those parts, and diminished in England. But a petition from Leeds represents this manufacture as having very much increased[305]since the revolution in all its several branches, to the general interest of England; and yet, in two days after the clothiers from three towns in Gloucestershire assert that the trade has decayed, and that the poor are almost starved.[306]The Commissioners of Trade differ in opinion from them and by their report it appears that the woollen manufacture was then very much increased and improved.[307]The traders have sometimes mistaken their own interests on those subjects. In 1698 a petition for prohibiting the importation from Ireland of all worsted and woollen yarn, represents that the poor of England are ready to perish by this importation;[308]and in 1739 several petitions were preferred against taking off the duties[309]from worsted and bay yarn exported from Ireland to England. But this has been done in the manner before mentioned, and is now acknowledged to be highly useful to England. Trading people have ever aimed at exclusive privileges. Of this there are two extraordinary instances: in the year 1698 two petitions were preferred from Folkstone and Aldborough, stating a singular grievancethat they suffered from Ireland, “by the Irish catching herringsat Waterford and Wexford,[310]and sending them to the Streights, and therebyforestallingand ruining petitioners’ markets;” but these petitioners had thehard lotof having motions in their favour rejected.
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 Englishintended 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 bothkingdoms, 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 givenfor 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 thatthis manufacture was “growing” amongst us, and the goodness of our own materials “for makingall mannerof 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 ither 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 greatsums 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 ofBritishchequered and striped linens exported out ofGreat Britainto 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 encouragementto 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 bealwaysready to give it theirutmostassistance.” 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 inforeignparts 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,discouragedby Great Britain, that the Irish have totally abandoned the culture of hemp.[343]
I hope to be excused for weighing scrupulously aproposed 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 makesociety 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 manufacturedthem, 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 inducedto 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 mostnumerous 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 muchill-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, whocould 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 likemanufactures have of late been made and are daily increasing in the kingdom of Ireland, andin the English plantationsin 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 inEngland 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 ofcolony 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 whatthe 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 securesthe subject in the enjoyment of property of every kind; and by the latterthe 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 kingdomtheir 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, andcould not liveby 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 theprotection 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 scoweringearth, 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 thebetter setting on work the poor peopleand inhabitants of the kingdoms and dominions aforesaid, and to the intent that the full use and benefit ofthe principal native commoditiesof 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 ofAsia, Africa, or America, shall be imported into England,Ireland, or Wales, but in ships which belong to the people of England orIreland, 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 ofthese 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 fullbenefit 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 thegreatest 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 inEngland, 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 clothiersand 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 tradeof 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 Irelandfrom 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 Britishplantations. 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 andbrown 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 formanufacture 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 thatduring 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 alteringlaws; 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 isreasonable, 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 isreasonable, 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 whereverthat 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, inthe 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 hadmuch 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]