Part 17

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 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, 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, 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."

Let me not be thought to undervalue the bounties and generosity of that great nation which has taken our linen trade under its protection. There is much ill-breeding, though, perhaps, some good sense, in the churlish reply of the philosopher to the request of the prince who visited his humble dwelling, and desired to know, and to gratify his wishes; that they were no more than this, that the prince should not stand between the philosopher and the sun. Had he been a man of the world he might have expressed the same idea with more address, though with less force and significance; he might have said, "I am sensible of your greatness and of your power; I have no doubts of your liberality; but Nature has abundantly given me all that I wish; intercept not one of her greatest gifts; allow me to enjoy the bounties of her hand, and the contentment of my own mind will furnish the rest."

I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.

Seventh Letter.

Dublin, 3rd September, 1779.

MY LORD,

By comparing the restrictive law of 1699 with the statutes which had been previously enacted in England from the fifteenth year of the reign of Charles II., relative to the colonies, it appears that this restrictive law originated in a system of colonisation. The principle of that system was that the colonies should send their materials to England and take from thence her manufactures, and that the making those manufactures in the colonies should be prohibited or discouraged. But was it reasonable to extend this principle to Ireland? The climate, growth, and productions of the colonies were different from those of the parent country. England had no sugar-canes, coffee, dying stuff, and little tobacco. She took all those from her colonies only, and it was thought reasonable that they should take from her only the manufactures which she made. But in Ireland the climate, soil, growth, and productions are the same as in England, who could give no such equivalent to Ireland as she gave to America, and was so far from considering her when this system first prevailed, as a proper subject for such regulations, that she was allowed the benefits arising from those colonies equally with England, until the fifteenth year of the reign of King Charles II. 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." 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, 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., 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, made in 1699, "for as much as wool and woollen manufactures of cloth, serge, bays, kersies, and other stuffs, made or mixed with wool, are the greatest and most profitable commodities of this kingdom, on which the value of lands and the trade of the nation do chiefly depend, and whereas great quantities of like manufactures have of late been made and are daily increasing in the kingdom of Ireland, and in the English plantations in America, and are exported from thence to foreign markets heretofore supplied from England, which will inevitably sink the value of lands, and tend to the ruin of the trade and woollen manufactures of this realm; for the prevention whereof and for the encouragement of the woollen manufactures in this kingdom, &c.

The ruinous consequences of the woollen manufactures of Ireland to the value of lands, trade, and manufactures of England, stated in this Act, are apprehensions that were entertained, and not events that had happened; and before those facts are taken for granted, I request the mischief recited in the Acts 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 demonstrates that the opinion entertained in England at the time of his prohibition of the import of cattle from Ireland was ill-founded; he calls it a strange conceit. If he was now living, he would probably consider the prohibition of our woollen exports as not having a much better foundation.

Connecting this preamble of the Act of 1699, with the speech made from the throne to the parliament of Ireland in the year 1698, with the addresses of both houses in England, and with the prohibition by this and by other Acts, formerly made in England, of exporting wool from Ireland except to that kingdom, the object of this new commercial regulation is obvious. It was to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland and in effect to prohibit the exportation from thence because it was the principal branch of manufacture and trade in England; to induce us to send to them our materials for that manufacture, and that we should be supplied with it by them; and to encourage, as a compensation to Ireland, the linen manufacture, which was not at that time a commercial object of any importance to England. This I take to be a part of the system of colony regulations. Whether it was reasonable or just to bring this kingdom into that system, has been already submitted from arguments drawn from the climates and productions of the different countries. The supposed compensation was no more than what Ireland had before; no further encouragement was given by England to our linen manufacture until six years after this prohibition, when at the request of the Irish House of Commons and after a representation of the ruinous state of the country, liberty was given by an English Act of Parliament to export our white and brown linens into the colonies, which was allowing us to do as to one manufacture what, before the fifteenth of King Charles II., was permitted in every instance.

It would be presumption in a private man to decide on the weight of those arguments; but to select and arrange facts that lie dispersed in journals and books of Statutes in both kingdoms, and to make observations on those facts with caution and respect, can never give offence to those who inquire for the purpose of relieving a distressed nation and of promoting the general welfare. In that confidence I beg leave to place this subject in a different view, and to request that it may be considered what the commercial system of this kingdom was at the time of passing this law of 1699, and whether it was, in this respect, reasonable or just that such a regulation should have been then made? The great object which the Lords and Commons of Great Britain have determined to investigate led to such a discussion; determined as they are to pursue effectual methods "for promoting the common strength, wealth, and commerce of both kingdoms." What better guides can they follow than the examples of their ancestors and the means used by them for many centuries, and in the happiest times, for attaining the same great purposes.

In my opinion it would be improper, in the present state of the British Empire, to agitate disputed questions that may inflame the passions of men. May no such questions ever arise between two affectionate sister kingdoms. It is my purpose only to state acknowledged facts, which never have been contested, and from those facts to lay before you the commercial system of Ireland before the year 1699.

For several centuries before this period Ireland was in possession of the English Common law and of Magna Charta. The former secures the subject in the enjoyment of property of every kind; and by the latter the liberties of all the ports of the kingdom are established.

The Statutes made in England for the common and public weal are, by an Irish Act of the 10th of Henry VII., made laws in Ireland; and the English Commercial Statutes, in which Ireland is expressly mentioned, will place the former state of commerce in this country in a light very different from that in which it has been generally considered in Great Britain.

By the 17th of Edward III., ch. 1, all sorts of merchandises may be exported from Ireland, except to the King's enemies.

By the 27th of Edward III., ch. 18, merchants of Ireland and Wales may bring their merchandise to the staple of England; and by the 34th of the same king, ch. 17, all kinds of merchandises may be exported from and imported into Ireland, as well by aliens as denizens. In the same year there is another Statute, ch. 18, that all persons who have lands or possessions in Ireland might freely import thither and export from that kingdom their own commodities; and by the 50th of Edward III., ch. 8, no alnage is to be paid, if frieze ware, which are made in Ireland.

This freedom of commerce was beneficial to both countries. It enabled Ireland to be very serviceable to Edward III., as it had been to his father and grandfather, in supplying numbers of armed vessels for transporting their great lords and their attendants and troops to Scotland and also to Portsmouth for his French wars.

But the reign of Edward IV. furnishes still stronger instances of the regard shown by England to the trade and manufactures of this country.

In the third year of that monarch's reign the artificers of England complained to parliament that they were greatly impoverished, and could not live by bringing in divers commodities and wares ready wrought. 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.

In the next year another Act 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.

And in a treaty between Henry VII. and the Netherlands, Ireland is included, both as to exports and imports.