CHAPTER II
Restrictions on Irish Trade and Manufactures—All Creeds Suffer—Presbyterian Exodus to America—Death of Royal Personages—Accession of George I
SINCE the days of Charles II, and probably before his reign, a contemptible jealousy of the growth of Irish commerce had taken possession of the commercial element in England. We have already said something about the crushing of the Irish cattle trade, while yet the “Merry Monarch” was on the throne; but a far deadlier blow was struck at Irish prosperity when, in 1698, the English manufacturers had the assurance to petition Parliament against the Irish woolen industry—then among the most prosperous in Europe. This petition was strongly indorsed by the English House of Lords, in an address to King William, wherein they, unconsciously, perhaps, paid a high tribute to Irish manufacturing genius. They virtually admitted that the superiority of Irish woolen fabrics made the English traders apprehensive that the farther growth of the Irish woolen industry “might greatly prejudice the said manufacture in his Majesty’s Kingdom of England.” Not content with this display of mean selfishness, the English fisheries’ interest protested against Irish fishermen catching herrings on the eastern coast of their own island, “thereby coming into competition with them [the English].” The Colonial Parliament of Ireland basely yielded to English coercion, and, in 1699, actually stabbed the industries of their own country in the back, by placing ruinous export duties on fine Irish woolens, friezes, and flannels! And this hostile legislation was aimed, not against the Catholic Irish, who had no industries, but against the Protestant Irish, who possessed all of them!
The English Parliament, thus secured against effective opposition, immediately passed an act whereby the Irish people were forbidden to export either the raw material for making woolen goods, or the goods themselves, to any foreign port, except a few English ports, and only six of the numerous Irish seaports were allowed even this poor privilege. The natural result followed. Irish prices went up in England, and, in spite of the acknowledged excellence of Irish manufactures, the English people would not purchase them at an advanced cost. The Irish traders could not afford to sell them at a moderate price, and, within a few years, most of the latter were absolutely ruined. Dr. P. W. Joyce, in his “History of Ireland,” estimates that “40,000 Irish Protestants—all prosperous working people—were immediately reduced to idleness and poverty—the Catholics, of course, sharing in the misery, so far as they were employed, and 20,000 Presbyterians and other Nonconformists left Ireland for New England. Then began the emigration, from want of employment, that continues to this day. But the English Parliament professed to encourage the Irish linen trade, for this could do no harm to English traders, as flax growing and linen manufacture had not taken much hold in England.”
This, according to Dr. Joyce, was the beginning of that smuggling trade with France which Ireland carried on for more than a century, and a close acquaintance, therefore, sprang up between the French and Irish traders and sailors. Ireland could sell her surplus wool to great advantage in France, and received from that country many luxuries, which, otherwise, she could not have enjoyed. French wines became common at Irish tables, above those of the working-class, and French silks decorated the fair persons of Irish maids and matrons. Moreover, this adventurous trade developed a hardy race of Irish sailors, and, by means of the Irish smugglers and their French copartners, the Irish priests found a convenient avenue of transit to and from the Continent; and brave young Irish spirits, registered as “Wild Geese,” found their way to the ranks of “the bold Brigade,” whose fame was then a household word in Europe. But the Irish masses, both Catholic and Nonconformist, were reduced to abject poverty, and each succeeding year brought fresh commercial restrictions, until, finally, almost every Irish industry, except the linen, was totally extirpated in the island. The smuggling trade, alone, kept some vitality in the commercial veins of the ruined country, and, in defiance of English and Anglo-Irish enactments against it, it continued to flourish down to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Well-meaning foreign writers, who did not make a study of Anglo-Irish relations in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, have expressed astonishment at the paucity of Irish industries, outside of linen, and have ascribed it to Irish non-adaptability to manufacturing pursuits! Not alone did England compel Ireland to fine her own traders, by levying export duties on their output, but she also, as we have seen, by her own Parliament, limited such exports to the meanest possible proportions! Of course, at this slavish period of the old so-called Irish Parliament, duties to limit the importation of English goods and to foster home industries were not allowed. Ireland was stripped of everything but linen and “homespun,” and then left a beggar. This is a most disgraceful chapter in the history of the political connection of Great Britain and Ireland—one that led to untold bitterness, and that caused the great orator, Grattan, in after years to exclaim, prophetically, in the Irish House of Commons: “What England tramples in Ireland will rise to sting her in America!” He alluded to the Presbyterian and Catholic exodus, which so materially aided the American Revolution.
The last hope of King James again attaining the throne of the “Three Kingdoms” disappeared with the terrible defeat inflicted on the French fleet at the battle of La Hogue, 1692, and, thereafter, his life was passed sadly—for he had ample time to ruminate on his misfortunes—at St. Germain, until he died, in 1701. His rival, William III, whose wife, Queen Mary II, had preceded him to the grave, died from the effects of a horseback accident, in March, 1702. He was immediately succeeded by Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart line who occupied the throne of England. Her reign was one of glory for Great Britain and one of hate and horror for Ireland. We have already mentioned some of the penal laws passed while she held sway. Her ministers, of course, were responsible for her acts, because she herself possessed only moderate ability. Unlike most of the Stuart family, she swam with the current, and so got along smoothly with her English subjects. The most important domestic event of her reign was the legislative union of England with Scotland—which virtually extinguished Scotland as a nation. This event occurred in May, 1707, and was accompanied by acts of the most shameless political profligacy on the part of the English minister and the Scotch lords and commons. In fact, the independence of Scotland, like that of Ireland ninety-three years later, was sold for titles, offices, pensions, and cold cash. The masses of the people, to do them justice, had little to do with this nefarious transaction, which was subsequently satirized by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns, in his lyric, one verse of which runs thus:
“What English force could not subdue
Through many warlike ages,
Is sold now by a craven few
For hireling traitors’ wages!
The English steel we could disdain—
Secure in valor’s station—
But English gold has been our bane—
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”
The deeds in arms of Anne’s great general, Marlborough, who was a traitor to both King James and King William, have been partially related in the chapters bearing on the career of the Franco-Irish Brigade and need no farther mention in this history.
In the days of William III appeared a pamphlet called “The Case of Ireland Stated,” which was written by William Molyneux, a member of Parliament, for the Dublin University. It appeared in 1698, and made, at once, a powerful impression on the public mind. It, in brief, took the ground that Ireland—that is, Protestant, colonial Ireland—was, of right, a separate and independent kingdom; that England’s original title of conquest, if she had any, was abrogated by charters granted to Ireland from time to time, and, finally, denied that the king and Parliament of England had power to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland by English-made laws. The English Parliament was, of course, greatly shocked and scandalized at the idea of a “mere Irishman” putting forth such theories, and solemnly ordered his book to be burned, publicly, by “the common hangman”—a functionary always in high favor when Ireland needs to be “disciplined.” The book was burned accordingly, but its spirit did not die then, nor is it yet dead, or likely to die, while Ireland contains a population. King William, in replying to the English Parliament’s address on the subject of Molyneux’s utterance, assured its members that “he would enforce the laws securing the dependence of Ireland on the imperial crown of Great Britain.”
In the chapter on the penal laws, many of the enactments of the reign of Anne have been summarized. Her sway was a moral nightmare over Ireland, and it is a remarkable historical coincidence that the Green Isle suffered more, materially and morally, under the English female than the male sovereigns. Under Elizabeth and Anne, the Irish Catholics were persecuted beyond belief. Under Victoria’s rule, which the British statistician, Mulhall, has called “the deadliest since Elizabeth,” they starved to death by the hundred thousand or emigrated by the million.
The régime of Queen Anne, like that of her predecessors and successors on the throne, gave the government of Ireland into the hands of Englishmen, who held all the important offices, from the viceroyalty downward, and who chose their sub-officers from among the least national element of the Irish people. This system, although somewhat modified, continues to the present day. In the Irish Parliament, there was an occasional faint display of sectarian nationality, but it proved of little advantage when the English wanted matters in that body to go as they wished. Ireland then, as a majority ruled by a minority, “stood on her smaller end,” and so it is even in our own times, notwithstanding occasional “concessions” and “ameliorations.”
But, from the day when the pamphlet, or book, of Molyneux saw the light, a Patriot party began to grow up in the Irish Parliament. The old Irish nation had, indeed, disappeared, for a period, but the new one soon began to manifest a spirit that roused the bitter hatred of England. Such infatuated Irish Protestants as still believed that they would be more gently treated on account of common creed with the stronger people were soon bitterly undeceived.
The death of Queen Anne, all of whose children by the Prince of Denmark had died before her, occurred in July, 1714. It is said that she secretly favored the succession of her half-brother, acknowledged by Louis XIV, and the Jacobite party in Great Britain, as James III of that realm, but the last Duke of Ormond, the Earl of Orrery, Bishop Atterbury, and Lord Bolingbroke, the Jacobite leaders in England, lost their nerve after the Queen’s death and allowed the golden opportunity of proclaiming the exiled Stuart king to pass away. The Hanoverian faction, which called James “the Pretender,” took advantage of their vacillation to proclaim the Elector of Hanover, who derived his claim from the Act of Succession or Settlement (which ignored the Stuart male line, or any of its Catholic collateral branches, and excluded them from the throne), under the title of George I. He derived his claim, such as it was, from James I, whose daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, had married the King of Bohemia. Her daughter, Sophia, married the Elector of Hanover and became mother of King George, who was a thorough German in speech, manner, and habit, although not in person or in manly characteristics. But he was a Protestant, and that sufficed for England. On August 1, 1714, he was proclaimed in London and Edinburgh, and on the 8th of that month in Dublin. The Scotch Jacobites ridiculed his accession in a racy “skit,” which began with—
“Oh, wha the deil hae we got for a king
But a wee, wee German lairdie!”
Ireland, broken in spirit and disgusted by the memory of King James II, remained quiescent, but, in 1715, Scotland and a portion of the north of England rose in rebellion, the former under the Earl of Mar and the latter under young Lord Derwentwater. They were not heartily supported. Both met with defeat, and Derwentwater, together with several English and Scotch adherents of note, was captured, beheaded, and had his estates confiscated to the “crown.” The English Parliament offered a reward of £50,000 ($250,000) for the “apprehension” of “the Pretender,” who had been previously “attainted,” but there were no takers, “the Pretender” aforesaid being safely housed in Paris. This bloody episode ended Jacobite “risings” in Great Britain for a generation.