CHAPTER III.
ENGLISH OPPOSITION TO EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT IN FAVOUR OF IRISH TRADE.
Mr. Fox, speaking in the British House of Commons on the 17th of May, 1782, as a responsible Minister of the Crown, thus stated the nature and effect of the legislation of the English Parliament with reference to Irish trade: "The power of external legislation had been employed against Ireland as an instrument of oppression, to establish an impolitic monopoly in trade, to enrich one country at the expense of the other."[63] The English Government was, previously to the Revolution of 1782, able to dominate the legislation of the Irish Parliament under the provisions of Poynings' Law. That power was used to induce the Irish Parliament to pass laws prejudicial to the liberties or the commerce of their country, and to prevent the enactment of laws for the protection of Irish liberty, and the development of Irish industrial energies. Thus, when the English Houses of Parliament addressed William III. on the subject of the Irish woollen trade, both Lords and Commons suggested that the King should use his influence to induce the Irish Parliament to restrain that manufacture, without rendering English legislation for the purpose necessary. A few days after these Addresses were presented, the King wrote to Lord Galway, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, as follows:—
"The chief thing that must be prevented is that the Irish Parliament take no notice of this here, and that you make effectual laws for the linen manufacture, and discourage as far as possible the woollen. It never was of such importance to have a good session of Parliament."[64]
Ireland was thus, in the words of Mr. Froude, "invited to apply the knife to her own throat."[65] "The Irish Houses, in dread of abolition if they refused, relying on the promise of encouragement to their linen trade, and otherwise unable to help themselves, acquiesced."[66] The enactment which they passed was temporary. Hely Hutchinson says that this law has every appearance of being framed on the part of the Administration. The servile body who assented to it soon had reason to know that to tolerate slavery is to embrace it. The law did not satisfy the English Parliament, who passed the perpetual enactment to which reference has been previously made.[67] This is, however, one of the few instances in which the Irish Parliament was prevailed on to pass laws in restraint of their own trade. Even in this case the destruction of the woollen industry was not considered complete until English legislation gave it a final blow.