English Interference with Irish Industries

English Interference with Irish Industries.


BY J. G. SWIFT MACNEILL, M.A., CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; BARRISTER-AT-LAW, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND CRIMINAL LAW IN THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF THE KING'S INNS, DUBLIN; AND AUTHOR OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT: WHAT IT WAS, AND WHAT IT DID.




If people felt impatient with the Irish, said Mr. Fawcett, addressing a political meeting at Shoreditch on November 2nd, 1881, they should remember that the Irish were, to a great extent, what England had made them. If there were some Irishmen now displaying bitter hostility to England, it should be remembered that for a long time Ireland had been treated as if she had been a hostile or a foreign country. A mass of vexatious restrictions were imposed on her industry, and it was thought that if any branch of Irish trade interfered with English profits, that branch of Irish trade was immediately to be discouraged. For a long time, for instance, to please the agricultural interests of this country, the importation of live cattle from Ireland was absolutely prohibited.

In the following pages I propose to exhibit summarily the material injuries inflicted upon Ireland by the commercial or anti-commercial arrangements of Great Britain. With this view, I will endeavour to sketch in outline the political relations of Ireland to Great Britain which rendered such arrangements possible (Chap. I.); the principal laws made by the English Parliament in restraint of Irish trade stating them in a plain and popular manner (Chap. II.); the opposition of the English Government to the efforts of the Irish Parliament to promote Irish trade (Chap. III.); the immediate effects of English legislation on Irish trade (Chap. IV.); the Irish Volunteer Movement and free trade (Chap. V.); the commercial arrangements between Great Britain and Ireland, 1782-1800 (Chap. VI.); the commercial arrangements effected between Great Britain and Ireland by the Act of Legislative Union (Chap. VII.).