J. G. Swift MacNeill

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.

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]