THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF ENGLISH LEGISLATION ON IRISH TRADE.
The immediate effects produced upon Ireland by the commercial policy
of Great Britain were such as might reasonably be anticipated from the
brief and necessarily imperfect account I have given of that system.
The best and most energetic members of the industrial community sought
refuge in exile from a land where honest labour was robbed by law
of its reward. The weaker ones, who were compelled to remain, this
terrible system defrauded, impoverished, and degraded. It afflicted
every Irishman, whether at home or abroad, with a sense of intolerable
wrong, and created that passionate resentment towards England, which
has been transmitted to succeeding generations. "One of the most
obvious consequences," says Mr. Lecky, "was that for the space of
about a century Ireland underwent a steady process of depletion,
most men of energy, ambition, talent, or character being driven from
her shores."[85] "If the ambition of an Irishman lay in the paths
of manufacture and commerce he was almost compelled to emigrate,
for industrial and commercial enterprise had been deliberately
crushed."[86] This legislation, it must be remembered, fell most
severely on the Protestant population of Ireland, although, of course,
it grievously affected every class, and, indeed, every member of the
community. Twenty thousand Puritans left Ulster on the destruction of
the woollen trade.[87] "Until the spell of tyranny was broken, in 1782,
annual ship-loads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and
Londonderry. The resentment they carried with them continued to burn
in their new homes; and, in the War of Independence, England had no
fiercer enemies than the great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had
held Ulster against Tyrconnel."[88]
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Mr. Lecky thinks the
population of Ireland slightly exceeded two millions,[89] and he adopts
the calculation of a contemporary writer that the woollen manufacture
at the time of its suppression afforded employment to 12,000 Protestant
families in the metropolis, and 30,000 dispersed over the rest of the
kingdom.[90] We can, therefore, see at a glance how large a fraction of
the entire population of the country were directly deprived of bread
by that measure. Swift, whose deanery lay in the liberties of Dublin,
the principal seat of the woollen manufacture, and who witnessed the
results of its suppression, thus writes:--"Three parts in four of the
inhabitants of that district of the town where I dwell were English
manufacturers, whom either misfortunes in trade, little petty debts
contracted through illness, or the presence of a numerous family, had
driven into our cheap country. These were employed in working up our
worse wool, while the finest was sent into England. Several of these
had taken the children of the native Irish apprentices to them who,
being humbled by the forfeiture of upwards of three millions by the
Revolution, were obliged to stoop to a mechanic industry. Upon the
passing of this bill, we were obliged to dismiss thousands of these
people from our service. Those who had settled their affairs returned
home, and overstocked England with workmen; those whose debts were
unsatisfied, went to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where they met
with good encouragement, whereby the natives having got a firm footing
in the trade, being acute fellows, so became as good workmen as any we
have, and supply the foreign manufacturers with a constant supply of
artisans."[91]
"Upon the checking the export of our woollen manufactures," writes
Mr. Arthur Dobbs, in 1729, "and by laying on heavy duties on its being
exported to England in 1699 and 1700, equivalent to a prohibition,
most of those who were embarked in it were laid under a necessity
of removing elsewhere; and, being piqued at the difficulties they
were laid under, many of the Protestants removed into Germany, and
settled in the Protestant states there, who received them with open
arms. Several Papists at the same time removed into the northern
parts of Spain, where they laid the foundations of a manufacture
highly prejudicial to England. Many also of the Protestants who were
embarked with Papists in the woollen manufacture, removed into France,
and settled at Roan and other parts. Notwithstanding Louis XIV. had
repealed the Edict of Nantes, and forced abroad the French Protestants
into different parts of Europe, yet these were kindly received by him,
had great encouragement given to them, and were protected in their
religion. From these beginnings they have in many branches so much
improved the woollen manufactures of France, as not only to supply
themselves, but even to vie with the English in the foreign markets;
and by their correspondence they have laid the foundation for the
running of wool thither both from England and Ireland, highly to the
prejudice of Britain, which pernicious practice is still carried on
in spite of all the care and precaution made use of to discountenance
and prevent it. Thus a check is put upon the sale of our woollen
manufactures abroad, which would have given employment to all the
industrious poor both of Britain and Ireland, had not our manufacturers
been forced away into France, Spain, and Germany, where they are now so
improved as in great measure to supply themselves with many sorts they
formerly had from England."[92]
In 1773 the Irish House of Commons "had to hear from the Linen Board
that 'many thousands of the best manufacturers and weavers, with their
families, had gone to seek their bread in America, and thousands were
preparing to follow.' Again a committee was appointed to inquire. This
time the blame was laid on England, which had broken the linen compact,
given bounties to Lancashire mill-owners, which Belfast was not allowed
to share, and in 'jealousy of Irish manufactures,' had laid duties on
Irish sail-cloth contrary to express stipulation. The accusation, as
the reader knows, was true."[93] "If," wrote Mr. Newenham, in 1805,
"we said that, during fifty years of the last century, the average
annual emigration to America and the West Indies amounted to 4,000, and
consequently that in that space of time 200,000 had emigrated to the
British Plantations, I am disposed to think we should rather fall short
of than exceed the truth."[94]
It would be easy to adduce further evidence of the extent of this
emigration caused by the destruction of Irish manufactures and its
results. The speech, however, of the Right Hon. Luke Gardiner,
delivered in the Irish House of Commons on the 2nd of April, 1784, is
noteworthy. Having described the destruction of the woollen trade,
which was initiated by the Irish Act laying it under temporary
prohibitions, passed by "a corrupt majority in this House;" the
consequent emigration of the manufacturers, their favourable reception
in foreign countries, and especially in France, who, availing herself
of their industry, was enabled, not only "to rival Great Britain, but
to undersell her in every market in Europe," the speaker proceeded
thus--
"England, from unhappy experience, is convinced of the pernicious
effects of her impolicy. The emigration of the Irish manufacturers in
the reign of King William is not the only instance that has taught that
nation the ruinous effects of restrictive laws. Our own remembrance
has furnished a sad instance of the truth of this assertion--furnished
it in the American war. America was lost by Irish emigrants. These
emigrations are fresh in the recollection of every gentleman in this
House; and when the unhappy differences took place, I am assured,
from the best authority, that the major part of the American army
was composed of Irish, and that the Irish language was as commonly
spoken in the American ranks as English. I am also informed it was
their valour determined the conquest; so that England not only lost
a principal protection of her woollen trade, but also had America
detached from her by force of Irish emigrants."[95]
The weaker and more defenceless members of the Irish industrial
community were forced by circumstances to remain at home, and were
accordingly exposed to the sufferings entailed by this policy of
unenlightened selfishness and exasperation.
The following extracts, taken from a mass of contemporaneous documents,
will give some idea of their condition.
"From the time," says Hely Hutchinson, "of this prohibition [of the
woollen manufactures] no Parliament was held in Ireland till the year
1703. Five years were suffered to elapse before any opportunity was
given to apply a remedy to the many evils which such a prohibition must
necessarily have occasioned. The linen trade was then not thoroughly
established in Ireland; the woollen manufacture was the staple trade,
and wool the principal material of that kingdom. The consequences of
the prohibition appear in the session of 1713. The Commons lay before
Queen Anne a most affecting representation containing, to use their
own words, 'a true state of our deplorable condition,' protesting that
no groundless discontent was the motive for that application, but a
deep sense of the evil state of their country, and of the further
mischiefs they have reason to fear will fall upon it if not timely
prevented. They set forth the vast decay and loss of its trade, its
being almost exhausted of coin that they are hindered from earning
their livelihoods, and from maintaining their own manufactures; that
their poor have thereby become very numerous; that great numbers of
Protestant families have been constrained to remove out of the kingdom,
as well into Scotland as into the dominions of foreign princes and
states; and that their foreign trade and its returns are under such
restrictions and discouragements as to be then become in a manner
impracticable, although that kingdom had by its blood and treasure
contributed to secure the plantation trade to the people of England.
"In a further Address to the Queen, laid before the Duke of Ormonde,
then Lord-Lieutenant, by the House, with its Speaker, they mention
the distressed condition of that kingdom, and more especially of the
industrious Protestants, by the almost total loss of trade and decay of
their manufactures, and, to preserve the country from utter ruin, apply
for liberty to export their linen manufactures to the Plantations.
"In a subsequent part of this session the Commons resolve that,
by reason of the great decay of trade and discouragement of the
manufactures of this kingdom, many poor tradesmen were reduced to
extreme want and beggary. This resolution was agreed to _nem. con._,
and the Speaker, Mr. Broderick, then his Majesty's Solicitor-General,
and afterwards Lord Chancellor, in his speech at the end of the
session, informs the Lord-Lieutenant that 'the representation of the
Commons was, as to the matters contained in it, the unanimous voice
and consent of a very full House, and that the soft and gentle tones
used by the Commons in laying the distressed condition of the kingdom
before his Majesty, showed that their complaints proceeded not from
querulousness, but from a necessity of seeking redress.'"[96]
In his proposal for the use of Irish manufactures, which was published
in 1720, Dean Swift says: "The Scripture tells us that oppression
makes a wise man mad, therefore, consequently speaking, the reason why
some men are not mad is because they are not wise. However, it were
to be wished that oppression would in time teach a little wisdom to
fools."[97] "Whoever travels in this country and observes the face of
nature, and the faces and habits and dwellings of the natives, will
hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity
is professed."[98] Nicholson, an Englishman, translated from the
Bishopric of Carlisle to that of Derry, in a letter to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, written in the same year, gives a similar account of the
prevailing destitution: "Never did I behold in Picardy, Westphalia,
and Scotland, such dismal marks of hunger and want as appeared in the
countenances of most of the poor creatures I met with on the road." He
states that one of his carriage horses having been killed by accident,
it was surrounded by "fifty or sixty famished cottagers, struggling
desperately to obtain a morsel of flesh for themselves and their
children."[99] Swift, writing in 1727, says: "The conveniency of ports
and harbours, which nature has bestowed so liberally on this country,
is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in
a dungeon."[100] "Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard of, either
in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of exporting
their native commodities and manufactures wherever they pleased, except
to countries at war with their own Prince or State; yet this privilege,
by the mere superiority of power, is refused us in the most momentous
parts of our commerce; besides an Act of Navigation, to which we never
consented, pinned down upon us, rigorously executed, and a thousand
other unexampled circumstances, as grievous as they are invidious to
mention."[101] "If we do flourish it must be against every law of
nature and reason, like the thorn of Glastonbury, that blossoms in the
midst of the winter."[102] "The miserable dress, diet, and dwelling of
the people, the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom, the
old seats of the nobility in ruins, and no new ones in their stead,
the families of farmers, who pay great rents, living in filth and
nastiness, upon butter-milk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to
their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receive
them. These, indeed, may be comfortable sights to an English spectator,
who comes for a short time only to learn the language, and returns back
to his own country whence he finds all his wealth transmitted.
"Nostra miseria magna est.
There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland which
is not a logical demonstration of its poverty."[103] "Ireland is the
poorest of all civilised countries, with every advantage to make it one
of the richest."[104]
"The great scarcity of corn," says Hely Hutchinson, "had been so
universal in this kingdom in the years 1728 and 1729 as to expose
thousands of families to the utmost necessities, and even to the danger
of famine, many artificers and housekeepers having been obliged to beg
for bread in the streets of Dublin."[105] This is probably the distress
to which Swift, writing in 1729, alludes: "Our present calamities are
not to be represented. You can have no notion of them without beholding
them. Numbers of miserable objects crowd our doors, begging us to take
their wares at any price to prevent their families from immediate
starving."[106]
"In twenty years," says Mr. Lecky, "there were at least three or four
of absolute famine."[107]
The writer of a pamphlet entitled "The Groans of Ireland in a Letter
to a Member of Parliament," published in Dublin in 1741, thus begins:--
"I have been absent from this country for some years, and on my return
to it last summer found it the most miserable scene of universal
distress that I ever read of in history.
"Want and misery in every face, the rich unable, almost as they were
unwilling, to relieve the poor; the roads spread with dead and dying
bodies; mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles which they fed
on; two or three, sometimes more, on a car going to the grave for
want of bearers, to carry them, and many buried only in the fields
and ditches where they perished. This universal scarcity was ensued
by malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts; whole
villages were laid waste by want and sickness and death in various
shapes, and scarce a house in the whole island escaped from tears and
mourning.
"It were to be wished, Sir, that some curious enquirer had made a
calculation of the numbers lost in this terrible calamity. If one for
every house in the kingdom died (and that is very probable, when we
consider that whole families and villages were swept off in many parts
together), the loss must have been upwards of 400,000 souls. If but one
for every other house (and it was certainly more), 200,000 perished--a
loss too great for this ill-peopled country to bear and the more
grievous as the loss was mostly of the grown-up part of the working
people."
The writer then proceeds to emphasise the fact to which Swift had
previously directed attention: that Irish famines are _artificial_.
"Sir,--When a stranger travels through this country and beholds its
wide extended and fertile plains, its great flocks of sheep and black
cattle, and all its natural wealth and conveniences for tillage,
manufactures, and trade, he must be astonished that such misery and
want could possibly be felt by its inhabitants; but you, who know the
Constitution and are acquainted with its weaknesses, can easily see the
reason."[108]
Writing in the year 1779, Hely Hutchinson says, "In this and the last
year about twenty thousand manufacturers in this metropolis were
reduced to beggary for want of employment; they were for a considerable
length of time supported by alms; a part of the contribution came
from England, and this assistance was much wanting, from the general
distress of all ranks of people in this country. Public and private
credit are annihilated."[109] Again, "A country will sooner recover
from the miseries and devastation occasioned by war, invasion,
rebellion, and massacre, than from laws restraining the commerce,
discouraging the manufactures, fettering the industry, and, above
all, breaking the spirits of the people."[110] He thus summarises the
effects of the eighty years' restrictive legislation, between the
destruction of the woollen trade in 1699 and 1779, the date at which
he was writing. "Can the history of any other fruitful country on the
globe, enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague
or pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and
wretchedness, and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders
of the people? There is no such example in ancient or modern story. If
the ineffectual endeavours by the representatives of those poor people
to give them employment or food had not left sufficient memorials of
their wretchedness, if their habitations, apparel, and food were not
sufficient proofs, I should appeal to the human countenance for my
voucher, and rest the evidence on that hopeless despondency that hangs
on the brow of unemployed industry."[111]
Such were the more striking effects of this pernicious legislation.
Its remoter consequences were likewise disastrous. Crime and outrage
were promoted by the suppression of national industry. "In the year
1762," says Hely Hutchinson, "a new evil made its appearance, which
all the exertions of the Government and of the Legislature have not
since been able to eradicate. I mean the risings of the White Boys.
They appear in those parts of the kingdom where manufactures are not
established, and are a proof of the poverty and want of employment
of the lower classes of our people."[112] Then again, this system
divorced law from public opinion. Sir Henry Maine has well observed,
that social necessities and social opinion are always more or less in
advance of law, and that the greater or less happiness of a nation
depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf between them
is narrowed.[113] In Ireland that gulf was deliberately widened; and
the people learned, with good reason, to regard the law, not as a
protector, but as a plunderer of their rightful gains, and as an agency
to make havoc of their industry. "When England," says Mr. Froude, "in
defence of her monopolies, thought proper to lay restrictions on the
Irish woollen trade, it was foretold that the inevitable result would
be an enormous development of smuggling."[114] "The entire nation,
high and low, was enlisted in an organised confederacy against the
law. Distinctions of creed were obliterated, and resistance to law
became a bond of union between Catholic and Protestant, Irish Celt and
English colonist."[115] Hely Hutchinson, in a paper laid before Lord
Buckinghamshire, in July, 1779, places this matter in a clear light.
"You have forced us into an illicit commerce, and our very existence
depends now upon it. Ireland has paid Great Britain for eleven years
past double the sum that she collects from the whole world in all the
trade which Great Britain allows her, a fact not to be paralleled in
the history of the world. Whence did the money come? But one answer
is possible. It came from the contraband trade, and surely it is
madness to suffer an important part of the empire to continue in that
condition. You defeat your own objects."[116]
Again, this system embittered the relations between landlord and
tenant in Ireland by raising unduly the creation of farms, the
cultivation of the soil being the only industrial resource left to
the people. "Rents," says Mr. Lecky, "were regulated by competition;
but it was competition between a half starving population, who had no
other resource except the soil, and were prepared to promise anything
rather than be deprived of it.[117] The mass of the people," the same
writer continues, "became cottiers, because it was impossible to gain
a livelihood as agricultural labourers or in mechanical pursuits. This
impossibility was due to the extreme paucity of circulating capital,
and may be chiefly traced to the destruction of Irish manufactures and
to the absence of a considerable class of resident landlords, who would
naturally give employment to the poor."[118]
Such were some of the more immediate effects upon Ireland of the
commercial arrangements of Great Britain. That system was thus
described in the Irish House of Commons in October, 1779, by Hussey
Burgh, who then held the office of Prime Serjeant, and afterwards
became Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. "The usurped
authority of a foreign Parliament has kept up the most wicked laws that
a jealous, monopolising, ungrateful spirit could desire, to restrain
the bounty of Providence and enslave a nation whose inhabitants are
recorded to be a brave, loyal, generous people; by the English code
of laws, to answer the most sordid views, they have been treated with
a savage cruelty; the words penalty, punishment, and Ireland are
synonymous; they are marked in blood on the margin of their statutes,
and though time may have softened the calamities of the nation, the
baneful and destructive influence of those laws have borne her down to
a state of Egyptian bondage. The English have sowed their laws like
serpents' teeth; they have sprung up as armed men."[119]
Few will be disposed to disagree with Mr. Froude in his estimate of
the effects of this policy. "By a curious combination this system
worked the extremity of mischief, commercially, socially, and
politically."[120]
FOOTNOTES:
[85] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., 257, 258.
[86] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., 259.
[87] "English in Ireland," vol. i., 435.
[88] "English in Ireland," vol. i., 436.
[89] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., 255.
[90] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., 213.
[91] Swift's Works (Scott's Ed.), vol. vii., 195.
[92] "An Essay upon the Trade of Ireland"--"Tracts and Treatises"
(Ireland), 2, p. 335-6.
[93] "English in Ireland," vol. ii., 137.
[94] Newenham on "Population," p. 60. This remark is quoted by Mr.
Lecky.
[95] "Irish Debates," vol. iii., 130.
[96] "Commercial Restraints," pp. 24-27.
[97] Swift's Works (Scott's Edition), vol. vi., p. 277.
[98] Swift's Works (Scott's Edition), vol. vi., 281, 282.
[99] "England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., 216.
[100] Swift's Works (Scott's Edition), vol. vii., p. 115.
[101] _Ibid._, pp. 115, 116.
[102] _Ibid._, p. 118.
[103] Swift's Works (Scott's Edition), vol. vii., pp. 118, 119.
[104] _Ibid._, p. 135.
[105] "Commercial Restraints," p. 44.
[106] Swift's Works (Scott's Edition), vol. vii., p. 199.
[107] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., p. 218.
[108] The resemblance between this account of the famine of 1740 and
the account of the condition of Ireland in the June preceding the last
Irish Famine, as given by the _Times_, is striking. In an article of
the 26th June, 1845, that paper says--"The facts of Irish destitution
are ridiculously simple. They are almost too commonplace to be told.
The people have not enough to eat. They are suffering a real, though an
artificial, famine. Nature does her duty. The land is fruitful enough.
Nor can it be fairly said that man is wanting. The Irishman is disposed
to work. In fact, man and Nature together do produce abundantly. The
island is full and overflowing with human food. But something ever
interposes between the hungry mouth and the ample banquet. The famished
victim of a mysterious sentence stretches out his hand to the viands
which his own industry has placed before his eyes, but no sooner are
they touched than they fly. A perpetual decree of _sic vos non nobis_
condemns him to toil without enjoyment. Social atrophy drains off
the vital juices of the nation." Mr. Lecky quotes from "The Groans
of Ireland," a copy of which he found in the Halliday Collection of
Pamphlets in the Irish Academy ("Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., p.
218). My attention was attracted by the reference, and, on inquiry,
I ascertained that there were several copies of this pamphlet in the
Library of the King's Inns.
[109] "Commercial Restraints," p. 3.
[110] _Ibid._, pp. 31, 32.
[111] "Commercial Restraints," pp. 78, 79.
[112] _Ibid._, p. 69.
[113] "Ancient Law," p. 24.
[114] "English in Ireland," vol. i., p. 497.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 500.
[116] _Ibid._, vol. ii., p. 247.
[117] "Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., p. 241.
[118] _Ibid._, p. 243.
[119] "MacNevin's Volunteers," p. 117. Mr. Froude well observes that
these memorable words "had nothing to do with penal laws, and related
entirely to the restrictions on trade." "English in Ireland," vol. ii.,
p. 264.
[120] "English in Ireland," vol. i., p. 502. In these pages I have
designedly refrained from referring to the Penal Code. I have
confined myself entirely to a recital of the leading features of
the restrictions imposed by England on Irish trade. It is, in my
opinion, impossible to estimate, in distinct scales, the evils done
by these terrible agencies. They acted and re-acted on each other,
and affected not merely the special objects of legislation, but more
or less directly every interest in the community. The able writer of
a pamphlet, "Irish Wool and Woollens," to which I have frequently
referred, says:--"Possibly the laws that annihilated the wool trade
wrought more destruction than the legislation that aimed at stamping
out the Catholic faith, for the trade Acts snatched bread from the
mouth, filched hope from the heart, and wrenched power from the hands
of the industrial sections of the community." (p. 43.) From this
opinion I am constrained to differ. Speaking as a Protestant, I have
no hesitation in saying that the injuries inflicted on Ireland by
the Penal Code exceeded the injuries inflicted on her by the trade
regulations. "Well," says the Rev. Canon MacColl, "may Mr. Matthew
Arnold speak of that Penal Code, of which the monstrosity is not
half known to Englishmen, and may be studied by them with profit."
("Arguments For and Against Home Rule," p. 60.)