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 was _set-up_ in 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 Ireland _endeavours were used to set up_ those 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
greatly decayed 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 grievance that they
suffered from Ireland, "by the Irish catching herrings _at Waterford and
Wexford_,[310] and sending them to the Streights, and thereby
_forestalling_ and ruining petitioners' markets;" but these petitioners
had the _hard lot_ of 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 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 L14,112. 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 L700,000
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
L12 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 L9,000 yearly in premiums on the importation of flax-seed, which
is now almost imported, and costs us between L70,000 and L80,000 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,