Ireland's woollen manufacture was thus sacrificed to England's commercial jealousy.[51] I will give hereafter some account of the widespread misery this industrial calamity entailed. It might have been expected that the solemn compact for the encouragement of the linen trade would have been scrupulously observed. This, however, was not the case. The English Parliament deliberately broke faith with the Irish people. This charge I will substantiate by quotations from the speeches of public men in the English Parliament, the words of the English statute book, and the admissions of English writers.
Lord Rockingham, speaking in the English House of Lords on the 11th of May, 1779, "reminded their lordships of the compact made between both kingdoms in King William's time, when the Parliament of Ireland consented to prohibit the export of their own woollen manufacture, in order to give that of England a preference, by laying a duty equal to a full prohibition on every species of woollens, or even of the raw commodity, and of the solemn assurances given by both Houses of the British Parliament that they would give every possible encouragement, and abstain from every measure which could prevent the linen manufacture to be rendered the staple of Ireland. But how had England kept its word? By laying duties or granting bounties to the linens of British manufacture equal to a prohibition of the Irish, and at the same time giving every kind of private and public encouragement to render Scotland a real rival to Ireland in almost every species of her linen fabrics."[52]
"Ireland," says Lord North when Prime Minister of England, in the speech from which I have previously quoted, "gave up her woollen trade by compact. The compact was an exclusive linen trade, rather a fair competition with England. Ireland, of her own accord, gave up the woollen trade by an Act of her own Legislature, which, when it expired, was made perpetual by an Act of the British Parliament. But this compact was no sooner made than it was violated by England, for, instead of prohibiting foreign linens, duties were laid on and necessarily collected, so far from amounting to a prohibition on the import of the Dutch, German, and East Country linen manufactures, that those manufactures have been able, after having the duties imposed on them by the British Parliament, to meet, and in some instances to undersell, Ireland both in Great Britain and the West Indies, and several other parts of the British Empire."[53]
Writing in 1778 to the opponents of some trifling relaxation of the commercial restraints of Ireland, Edmund Burke asks: "Do they forget that the whole woollen manufacture of Ireland, the most extensive and profitable of any, and the natural staple of that kingdom, has been in a manner so destroyed by restrictive laws of their own, that in a few years it is probable they (the Irish) will not be able to wear a coat of their own fabric? Is this equality? Do gentlemen forget that the understood faith upon which they were persuaded to such an unnatural act has not been kept, and that a linen manufacture has been set up and highly encouraged against them?"[54]
In the year 1750 heavy taxes were laid on the import to England of sail-cloth made of Irish hemp, contrary, of course, to the express stipulation of 1698. An address presented in 1774 to Lord Harcourt, the Viceroy, by the Irish House of Commons thus describes the effect of this measure: "They had been confined by law to the manufacture of flax and hemp. They had submitted to their condition, and had manufactured these articles to such good purpose that at one time they had supplied sails for the whole British navy. Their English rivals had now crippled them by laying a disabling duty on their sail-cloths, in the hope of taking the trade out of their hands, but they had injured Ireland without benefiting themselves. The British market was now supplied from Holland and Germany and Russia, while to the Empire the result was only the ruin of Ulster and the flight of the Protestant population to America."[55]
I have dwelt thus at length on the chief commercial restraints laid on Ireland by the direct legislation of England. This interference was, however, carried to almost every branch of Irish trade. To take a few examples. Lord North in the English Parliament gives the following account of England's dealings with the Irish glass trade:—