The Commercial Restraints of Ireland

Part 1

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COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND.

THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND

CONSIDERED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A NOBLE LORD, CONTAINING AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE AFFAIRS OF THAT KINGDOM. DUBLIN, 1779.

BY JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE, ETC.

"----the best exposition which exists of the poisonous forces which had so long been working in the country."--Froude.

"This valuable and rare book is, perhaps, the best ever written on the subject of Irish trade, and the restrictions put upon it by England."--Mr. Blackburne.

Re-Edited, WITH A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE, INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND INDEX,

BY W. G. CARROLL, M.A. S.S. BRIDE'S AND MICHAEL LE POLE'S, DUBLIN.

DUBLIN M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE STREET LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., STATIONERS'-HALL COURT. 1882

"Good Heaven! for what peculiar crimes, Beyond the guilt of former times, Is Ireland ever doom'd by fate To groan beneath Oppression's weight."--Baratariana.

"If your vessel is frequently in danger of foundering in the midst of a calm, if by the smallest addition of sail she is near oversetting, let the gale be ever so steady, you would neither reproach the crew nor accuse the pilot or the master; you would look to the construction of the vessel and see how she had been originally framed and whether any new works had been added to her that retard or endanger her course."--Commercial Restraints.

PRINTED BY M. H. GILL AND SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-ST., DUBLIN.

The Publishers desire to express their best thanks to the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College for their kindness in lending the Library copy of the "Commercial Restraints," and the portrait of Provost Hely Hutchinson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; also for the extracts from the College Register, and for free access to the Matriculation and Judgment Books.

The Publishers have, likewise, to acknowledge their obligation to Sir Samuel Ferguson for the courteous favour of the fac-simile of Provost Hutchinson's autograph which underlines the frontispiece.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Life ix

Notes: (A) The Hutchinson Family lxxix (B) Dr. Leland lxxxv (C) Dr. Duigenan lxxxvii (D) Grattan and Fitzgibbon's College Course lxxxix (E) Lists of the Secretaries of State, Chancellors of the Exchequer, Speakers of the Irish House of Commons, and Chief Secretaries xciv

Introduction xcix

Commercial Restraints 1

Appendix 165

Index 169

LIFE OF PROVOST HELY HUTCHINSON.

THE RIGHT HON. JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, author of the "Commercial Restraints," was certainly one of the most remarkable men that this country ever produced; and he took, amidst an unequalled combination of brilliant rivals, a very prominent part in the most interesting and splendid period of Ireland's internal history. He was, according to Dr. Duigenan, a man of humble parents. He entered Trinity College as a Pensioner, in the year 1740, under the name John Hely, and after his marriage he adopted the name Hutchinson, on succeeding to the estate of his wife's uncle.

In 1744 he obtained his B.A., and Duigenan admits that in his Undergraduate Course he won some premiums at the quarterly examinations. In 1765 he was presented with the degree of LL.D. Honoris Causa. The College Calendar, in the list of Provosts, has, "1774. The Rt. Hon. John Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., educated in Trin. Coll., Dublin, but not a Fellow; admitted Provost by Letters Patent of George III., July 15; Member of Parliament for the City of Cork, and Secretary of State. Died Provost, Sep. 4, 1794, at Buxton."

This is all the mention which the published records of the College make of, perhaps, its most celebrated Provost. The Calendar is inaccurate as to the year of his matriculation, and it does not even tell that he was the author of the "Commercial Restraints"--its memorial notices being extremely scanty and brief; but in other contemporary writings we find several notices of him, unfavourable and favourable. He was called to the Bar in 1748; King's Counsel, 1758; Member for Lanesborough as John Hely Hutchinson of Knocklofty, 1759; in 1760 he received, in a silver case, the freedom of Dublin for his patriotic services in parliament. He was Member for Cork City as John Hely Hutchinson of Palmerston, and afterwards as Right Hon., 1761; Prime Serjeant, sometimes going Judge of Assize, and Privy Councillor, 1761; Alnager, 1763; Major in a Cavalry Regiment, which, when threatened with a court-martial for non-attendance to duty, he sold forthwith for L3,000; Provost and Searcher of Strangford, 1774; Principal Secretary of State, 1777; M.P. for Taghmon, 1790; died 1794 (according to the College Calendar at Buxton, and according to the Gentleman's Magazine in Dublin). He was also Treasurer of Erasmus Smith's Board, and one of the Commissioners for inquiring into Education Endowments, and he strove perseveringly but fruitlessly to obtain besides the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.

The most important and most historic of all these appointments was the Provostship, and it is in connection with the Provostship that we know most about him. He won the high office, for which, in regard of any sort of learning, he was totally disqualified, by a dexterous intrigue with the Chief Secretary of the day, Sir John Blacquiere; and those who cared most for Hutchinson considered that the manoeuvre was an unwise one for him. It forfeited his assured prospects at the Bar, and it fastened on him the odious imputation of an insatiable avarice. The appointment, moreover, was regarded as an affront and an injury by the body over which he was placed. Fellows and Scholars in various ways resented the indignity, and Hutchinson had to face a very surly temper inside the walls. He faced it with a light heart, and triumphed over it; but it often turned on him, and stung him. He considered that it was well worth the cost; for in the first place it was an appointment for life; and then he had not to give up his lucrative practice in the law courts, which Froude says was worth nearly L5,000 a year; and in fact he never ceased to angle for the Mastership of the Rolls. In the next place, he got in addition a splendid town residence, on which eleven thousand pounds had just been expended; he got an income of two thousand one hundred a year; he got a very wide patronage, and he calculated on getting the control of the parliamentary representation of the University, which at that time was in the hands of the Fellows and Scholars. This last object would have been an immense acquisition for him; but he failed to win the game, the playing of which led him, according to Duigenan and others, into some of his most reprehensible courses.

Part 2

As has been said above, in the rivalries of public life Hutchinson was pitted against a phalanx of as able men as ever appeared together in any country; and most of these men he supplanted and surpassed. They avenged themselves by lampooning him, and they were masters in the art. The Provost was assailed in prose and in verse, in couplet and in cartoon, in newspapers and pamphlets, in the "Lachrymae Academicae," "Baratariana," and "Pranceriana;" and these two last pasquinades are unique in English literature. Their satire is as broad and as wounding as that of Junius, while it is often far more finished and playful; and there is no other instance of so many men of the same ability and station being combined in such a mosaic of detraction.

"BARATARIANA," so called from Sancho Panza's island-kingdom, was written in verse and in prose, and it appeared originally as letters in the Freeman's Journal, which at that time, previous to its removal to "Macaenas' Head" in Bride-street, was published over St. Audeon's Arch. The principal writers of these letters were Sir Hercules Langrishe, Flood, Grattan, Yelverton, Gervase Bushe, and Philip Tisdall. The volume is "a collection of pieces published during the administration of Lord Townshend," and in it the Lord Lieutenant figures as "Sancho," Anthony Malone as "Don Antonio," Provost Andrews as "Don Francesco Andrea del Bumperoso," and Hely Hutchinson under the various titles of "Don John Alnagero, Autochthon, Terrae Filius, Monopolist, Single Session, and Serjeant Rufinus." It was in one of these papers that Grattan, with an audacious drollery, drew his celebrated character of Lord Chatham, as a privileged extract from a manuscript copy of Robertson's forthcoming "History of America." The description given by Langrishe of Hutchinson, who was not Provost at that time, is: "He talks plausibly and with full confidence, and whatever Pro-consul is deputed here Rufin immediately kidnaps him into a guardianship, and like another Trinculo erects himself into a viceroy over him. His whole elocution is alike futile and superficial. It has verdure without soil, like the fields imagined in a Calenture. He has great fluency, but little or no argument. He has some fancy, too, but it serves just to wrap him into the clouds and leave him there, while he holds himself suspended, planing and warbling like a lark, without one thought to interrupt the song. If he has any forte it is in vituperation or abuse. In 1766 he defeated the first Militia Bill. His first stride in apostasy was supporting the Privy Council Money Bill in 1767 [for opposing which Anthony Malone had previously lost the Prime Serjeancy in 1754, and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in 1761;] his next was in defending the motion for the additional regiments, whereby we were treated like a ravaged country, where contributions are levied to maintain the very force that oppresses it." For these ministerial services Hutchinson got the Prime Serjeancy, with an extra salary of L500 a year. In the next session he was useful to the Crown in regard of the Pensions Enquiry Bill and the Embargo Corn Bill, and was rewarded with the sinecure Alnager's place, worth L1,000 a year. He was made a Privy Councillor, got the reversionary grant of the Principal Secretaryship of State, and the commission of a half-pay majority, and was what Primate Stone termed "a ready-money voter." "He got more," says Flood, "for ruining one kingdom than Admiral Hawke got for saving three." The "List of the Pack," one of the rhymes in the volume, has:

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