Part 20

Two other reasons were assigned for this prohibition: that the Irish had shown themselves unwilling to promote the linen manufacture, and that there were great quantities of wool in Ireland. But they have since cultivated the linen trade with great success, and great numbers of their people are employed in it. Of late years by the operation of the land-carriage bounty, agriculture has increased in a degree never before known in this country; extensive tracts of lands, formerly sheep-pasture, are now under tillage, and much greater rents are given for that purpose than can be paid by stocking with sheep; the quantity of wool is greatly diminished from what it was in the year 1699, supposing it to have been then equal to the quantity in 1687, it has been for several years lessening, and is not likely to be increased. In those two important circumstances the grounds of the apprehensions of England have ceased, and the state of Ireland has been materially altered since the year 1699.

Another reason respecting England and foreign States, particularly France, has failed. England was, in 1698, in possession of the woollen trade in most of the foreign markets, and expected still to continue to supply them, as appears by the preamble of her Statute passed in that year.

She at that time expected to keep this manufacture to herself. The people of Leeds, Halifax, and Newberry, petition the House of Commons "that by some means the woollen manufacture may be prevented from being set up in foreign countries;" and the Commons, in their address, mention the keeping it as much as possible entire to themselves. But experience has proved the vanity of those expectations; several other countries cultivate this trade with success. France now undersells her. England has lost some of those markets, and it is thought probable that Ireland, if admitted to them, might have preserved and may now recover the trade that England has lost.

A perseverance in this restrictive policy will be ruinous to the trade of Great Britain. Whatever may be the state of America, great numbers of the inhabitants of Ireland, if the circumstances of this country shall continue to be the same as at present in respect of trade, will emigrate there; this will give strength to that part of the empire on which Great Britain can least, and take it from that part on which at present she may most securely depend. But this is not all the mischief; those emigrants will be mostly manufacturers, and will transfer to America the woollen and linen manufactures, to the great prejudice of those trades in England, Scotland, and Ireland; and then one of the means used to keep the colonies dependent by introducing this country into a system of colonisation, will be the occasion of lessening, if not dissolving, the connection between them and their parent State.

Great Britain, weakened in her extremities, should fortify the heart of her empire; Great Britain, with powerful foreign enemies united in lasting bonds against her, and with scarcely any foreign alliance to sustain her, should exert every possible effort to strengthen herself at home. The number of people in Ireland have more than doubled in fourscore years. How much more rapid would be the increase if the growth of the human race was cherished by finding sufficient employment and food for this prolific nation! it would probably double again in half a century. What a vast accession of strength such numbers of brave and active men, living almost within the sound of a trumpet, must bring to Great Britain, now said to be decreasing considerably in population!--a greater certainty than double those numbers dispersed in distant parts of the globe, the expense of defending and governing of which must at all times be great. Sir W. Temple, in 1673, takes notice of the circumstances prejudicial to the trade and riches of Ireland, which had hitherto, he says, made it of more loss than value to England. They have already been mentioned. The course of time has removed some of them, and the wisdom and philanthropy of Britain may remove the rest. "Without these circumstances (says that honest and able statesman), the native fertility of the soils and seas, in so many rich commodities, improved by multitudes of people and industry, with the advantage of so many excellent havens, and a situation so commodious for all sorts of foreign trade, must needs have rendered this kingdom one of the richest in Europe, and made a mighty increase both of strength and revenue to the crown of England."

During this century, Ireland has been, without exaggeration, a mine of wealth to England, far beyond what any calculation has yet made it. When poor and thinly inhabited she was an expense and a burden to England; when she had acquired some proportion of riches and grew more numerous, she was one of the principal sources of her wealth. When she becomes poor again, those advantages are greatly diminished. The exports from Great Britain to Ireland, in 1778, were less than the medium value of the four preceding years in a sum of L634,444 3s. 0d; and in the year 1779, Great Britain is obliged, partly at her own expense, to defend this country, and for that purpose has generously bestowed out of her own exchequer a large sum of money. Those facts demonstrate that the poverty of Ireland ever has been a drain, and her riches an influx of wealth to England, to which the greater part of it will ever flow, and it imports not to that country through what channel; but the source must be cleared from obstructions, or the stream cannot continue to flow.

Such a liberal system would increase the wealth of this kingdom by means that would strengthen the hands of government, and promote the happiness of the people. Ireland would be then able to contribute largely to the support of the British Empire, not only from the increase of her wealth, but from the more equal distribution of it into a greater number of hands among the various orders of the community. The present inability of Ireland arises principally from this circumstance, that her lower and middle classes have little or no property, and are not able, to any considerable amount, either to pay taxes or consume those commodities that are the usual subjects of them; and this has been the consequence of the laws which prevent trade and discourage manufactures. The same quantity of property distributed through the different classes of the people would supply resources much superior to those which can be found in the present state of Ireland. The increase of people there under its present restraints makes but a small addition to the resources of the State in respect of taxes. In 1685, the amount of the inland excise in Ireland was L75,169. In 1762, it increased only to L92,842. Those years are taken as periods of a considerable degree of prosperity in Ireland. The people had increased, from 1685 to 1762, in a proportion of nearly 7 to 4, which appears from this circumstance, that in 1685 hearth-money amounted to L32,659, and in 1762 to L56,611. At the former period the law made to restrain and discourage the principal trade and manufacture of Ireland had not been made. There were then vast numbers of sheep in Ireland, and the woollen manufacture was probably in a flourishing state. At the former of those periods the lower classes of the people were able to consume excisable commodities; in the latter they lived for the most part on the immediate produce of the soil. The numbers of people in a state, like those of a private family, if the individuals have the means of acquiring, add to the wealth, and if they have not those means, to the poverty of the community. Population is not always a proof of the prosperity of a nation; the people may be very numerous and very poor and wretched. A temperate climate, fruitful soil, bays and rivers well stocked with fish, the habits of life among the lower classes, and a long peace, are sufficient to increase the numbers of people: these are the true wealth of every state that has wisdom to encourage the industry of its inhabitants, and a country which supplies in abundance the materials for that industry. If the state or the family should discourage industry, and not allow one of the family to work, because another is of the same trade, the consequences to the great or the little community must be equally fatal.

Is there not business enough in this great world for the people of two adjoining islands, without depressing the inhabitants of one of them? Let the magnanimity and philanthropy of Great Britain address her poor sister kingdom in the same language which the good-natured Uncle Toby uses to the fly in setting it at liberty:--"Poor fly; there's room enough for thee and me."

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

Ninth Letter.

Dublin, 10th Sept., 1779.

MY LORD,

Besides those already mentioned, various other commercial restraints and prohibitions give the British trader and manufacturer many great and important advantages over the Irish. Whilst our markets are at all times open to all their productions and manufactures, with inconsiderable duties on the import, their markets are open or shut against us as suits their conveniency. On several articles of the first importance, and on almost all our own manufactures imported into Great Britain, duties are imposed equal to a prohibition. In the instance of woollen goods, theirs in our ports pay but a small duty; ours in their ports are loaded with duties which amount to a prohibition. Theirs on the exportation are subject to no duty; ours, if permitted to be exported, would, as the law now stands, be subject to a duty over and above that payable for alnage and for the alnager's fee. If the Act of 1699 was repealed, the English would still have many great advantages over us in the woollen trade.

In our staple manufacture, the bounties given on the exportation of white and brown Irish linen from Great Britain would still continue that trade in the hands of the British merchant. On all coloured linens a duty equal to a prohibition is imposed on the importation into Great Britain; but theirs, imported to us, are subject to ten per cent., and under that duty they have imported considerably. This inequality of duty, and the bounty given by the British Act of the tenth of Geo. III., on the exportation of their chequered and striped linens from Great Britain, secures to them the continuance of the great superiority which they have acquired over us in those very valuable branches of this trade. In many other articles they have given themselves great advantages. Beer they export to us in such quantities as almost to ruin our brewery; but they prevent our exportation to them by duties, laid on the import there, equal to a prohibition. Of malt they make large exports to us, to the prejudice of our agriculture, but have absolutely prohibited our exportation of that commodity to them. Some manufactures they retain solely to themselves, which we are prohibited from exporting, and cannot import from any country but Great Britain, as glass of all kinds. Hops they do not allow us to import from any other place, and in a facetious style of interdiction, pronounce such importation to be a common nuisance. They go further, and by laying a duty on the export, and denying the draw-back, oblige the Irish consumer to pay a tax appropriated, it is said, to the payment of a British debt. I shall make no political, but the subject requires a commercial observation--it is this: the man who keeps a market solely to himself, in exclusion of all others, whether he appears as buyer or seller, fixes his own price, and becomes the arbiter of the profit and loss of every customer.

The various manufactures made or mixed with cotton are subject, by several British Acts, to duties on the importation amounting to 25 per cent.

By another Act, penalties are imposed on wearing any of those manufactures in Great Britain, unless made in that country. Those laws have effectually excluded the Irish manufactures, in all those branches, from the British markets; and it has been already shown that they cannot be sent to the American. From Great Britain into Ireland all those articles are imported in immense quantities, being subject here to duties amounting to 10 per cent. only.

But it would be tedious to descend into a further detail, and disgusting to write a book of rates instead of a letter.

Their superior capitals and expertness give them decisive advantages in every species of trade and manufacture. By the extension of the commerce of Ireland, Great Britain would acquire new and important advantages, not only by the wealth it would bring to that country, and the increase of strength to the empire, but by opening to the British merchant new sources of trade from Ireland.

It is time to draw to a conclusion. I have reviewed my letters to your lordship, for the purpose of avoiding every possible occasion of offence. I flatter myself every reader will discern that they have been written with upright and friendly intentions, not to excite jealousies, but to remove prejudices, to moderate, and conciliate; and that they are intended as an appeal, not to the passions of the multitude, but to the wisdom, justice, and generosity of Britain. Shakespeare could place a tongue in every wound of Caesar; but Antony meant to inflame; and the only purpose of those letters is to persuade. I have, therefore, not even removed the mantle except where necessity required it.

In extraordinary cases where the facts are stronger than the voice of the pleader, it is not unusual to allow the client to speak for himself. Will you, my lord, one of the leading advocates for Ireland, allow her to address her elder sister, and to state her own case; not in the strains of passion or resentment, nor in the tone of remonstrance, but with a modest enumeration of unexaggerated facts in pathetic simplicity. She will tell her, with a countenance full of affection and tenderness, "I have received from you invaluable gifts--the law of common right, your great charter, and the fundamentals of your constitution. The temple of liberty in your country has been frequently fortified, improved, and embellished; mine, erected many centuries since the perfect model of your own, you will not suffer me to strengthen, secure, or repair; firm and well-cemented as it is, it must moulder under the hand of Time for want of that attention which is due to the venerable fabric. We are connected by the strongest ties of natural affection, common security, and a long interchange of the kindest offices on both sides. But for more than a century you have, in some instances, mistaken our mutual interest. I sent you my herds and my flocks, filled your people with abundance, and gave them leisure to attend to more profitable pursuits than the humble employment of shepherds and of herdsmen. But you rejected my produce, and reprobated this intercourse in terms the most opprobrious. I submitted; the temporary loss was mine, but the perpetual prejudice your own. I incited my children to industry, and gave them my principal materials to manufacture. Their honest labours were attended with moderate success, but sufficient to awaken the commercial jealousy of some of your sons; indulging their groundless apprehensions, you desired my materials, and discouraged the industry of my people. I complied with your wishes, and gave to your children the bread of my own; but the enemies of our race were the gainers. They applied themselves with tenfold increase to those pursuits which were restrained in my people, who would have added to the wealth and strength of your empire what, by this fatal error, you transferred to foreign nations. You held out another object to me with promises of the utmost encouragement. I wanted the means, but I obtained them from other countries, and have long cultivated, at great expense, and with the most unremitted efforts, that species of industry which you recommended. You soon united with another great family, engaged in the same pursuit, which you were also obliged to encourage among them, and afterwards embarked in it yourself, and became my rival in that which you had destined for my principal support. This support is now become inadequate to the increased number of my offspring, many of whom want the means of subsistence. My ports are ever hospitably open for your reception, and shut, whenever your interest requires it, against all others; but yours are, in many instances, barred against me. With your dominions in Asia, Africa, and America my sons were long deprived of all beneficial intercourse, and yet to those colonies I transported my treasures for the payment of your armies, and in a war waged for their defence one hundred thousand of my sons fought by your side. Conquest attended our arms. You gained a great increase of empire and of commerce, and my people a further extension of restraints and prohibitions. In those efforts I have exhausted my strength, mortgaged my territories, and am now sinking under the pressure of enormous debts, contracted from my zealous attachment to your interests, to the extension of your empire, and the increase of your glory. By the present unhappy war for the recovery of those colonies, from which they were long excluded, my children are reduced to the lowest ebb of poverty and distress. It is true you have lately, with the kindest intentions, allowed me an extensive liberty of selling to the inhabitants of those parts of your empire; but they have no inducement to buy, because I cannot take their produce in return. Your liberality has opened a new fountain, but your caution will not suffer me to draw from it. The stream of commerce intended to refresh the exhausted strength of my children flies untasted from their parched lips.

"The common parent of all has been equally beneficent to us both. We both possess in great abundance the means of industry and happiness. My fields are not less fertile nor my harbours less numerous than yours. My sons are not less renowned than your own for valour, justice, and generosity. Many of them are your descendants, and have some of your best blood in their veins. But the narrow policy of man has counteracted the instincts and the bounties of nature. In the midst of those fertile fields some of my children perish before my eyes for want of food, and others fly for refuge to hostile nations.

Suffer no longer, respected sister, the narrow jealousy of commerce to mislead the wisdom and to impair the strength of your state. Increase my resources, they shall be yours, my riches and strength, my poverty and weakness will become your own. What a triumph to our enemies, and what an affliction to me, in the present distracted circumstances of the empire, to see my people reduced by the necessity of avoiding famine, to the resolution of trafficing almost solely with themselves! Great and powerful enemies are combined against you; many of your distant connections have deserted you. Increase your strength at home, open and extend the numerous resources of my country, of which you have not hitherto availed yourself, or allowed me the benefit. Our increased force, and the full exertions of our strength, will be the most effectual means of resisting the combination formed against you by foreign enemies and distant subjects, and of giving new lustre to our crowns, and happiness and contentment to our people."

APPENDIX.--No. I.

Quantity of Wool, Woollen, and Worsted Yarn exported from Ireland to Great Britain in the following years:--

+-------------------------------------------------------+ | Years | WOOL. | YARN. | | Ending |-------------|------------------------------| | the 25th | | Woollen. | Worsted. | | of March.| stones. lbs.| stones. lbs.| stones. lbs.| |----------|-------------|---------------|--------------| | 1764 | 10,128 6 | 9,991 14 | 139,412 12 | | 1795 | 17,316 0 | 13,450 12 | 149,915 9 | | 1766 | 21,722 13 | 7,980 0 | 152,122 0 | | 1767 | 48,733 8 | 7,553 0 | 151,940 9 | | 1768 | 28,521 11 | 11,387 6 | 157,721 3 | | 1769 | 3,840 16 | 5,012 0 | 131,365 2 | | 1770 | 2,578 0 | 3,833 0 | 117,735 9 | | 1771 | 2,118 5 | 4,868 2 | 139,378 14 | | 1772 | 2,045 6 | 5,947 0 | 115,904 4 | | 1773 | 1,839 2 | -- | 94,098 10 | | 1774 | 1,007 11 | -- | 63,920 10 | | 1775 | 2,007 13 | -- | 78,896 14 | | 1776 | 1,059 15 | -- | 86,527 0 | | 1777 | 1,734 7 | -- | 114,703 2 | | 1778 | 1,665 12 | -- | 122,755 15 | +-------------------------------------------------------+

APPENDIX.--No. II.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Years| DRAPERY. | LINEN COTTON. | |ending|----------------------------------------------|----------------| | the | | | Silk, mixed | | 25th | New. | Old. | manufacture. | | of |------------------------|---------------------|----------------| |March.|Quantity. Value. |Quantity. Value. | Value. | |------|------------------------|---------------------|----------------| | | | L s. d. | | L s. d.| L s. d. | | 1769 |394,553|49,319 3 9 |207,117|144,982 8 6|13,402 10 7 | | 1770 |462,499|57,812 7 6 |249,666|174,766 14 6|20,907 18 2-1/2| | 1771 |362,096|45,262 0 0 |217,395|152,176 10 0|20,282 5 8 | | 1772 |314,703|39,337 18 9 |153,566|107,496 4 0|14,081 15 6-1/2| | 1773 |387,143|48,392 17 6 |200,065|147,045 13 6|20,472 7 3-1/2| | 1774 |461,407|57,675 17 6 |282,317|197,621 18 0|21,611 10 3-1/4| | 1775 |465,611|58,201 9 4-1/2|281,379|196,965 13 0|24,234 16 9-1/2| | 1776 |676,485|84,560 12 6 |290,215|203,150 10 0|30,371 16 8-1/2| | 1777 |731,819|91,477 8 9 |381,330|266,931 0 0|45,411 3 7 | | 1778 |741,426|92,678 6 3 |378,077|264,653 18 0|52,675 1 11 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

APPENDIX.--No. III.