[67] 10 & 11 Will. III., c. 10.
[68] "English in Ireland," vol. i., p. 439.
[69] The charge of indolence which Mr. Froude has here preferred against the Irish peasantry has frequently been refuted. The accusation is an old one. Speaking in the Irish House of Commons in 1784, the Right Hon. Luke Gardiner thus repelled it:—"Those who render our people idle are the first to ridicule them for that idleness, and to ridicule them without a cause. National characteristics are always unjust, as there never was a country that has not produced both good and bad." "They are general assertions, as false as they are illiberal. Irishmen have shown spirit and genius in whatever they have undertaken." "I call upon gentlemen to specify one instance where the people were indolent when the laws of their country protected them in their endeavours." ("Irish Debates," iii., p. 127.) "It is a cant in England," says Mr. O'Connell, "that they (the Irish) are an idle people, but how can that be said when they are to be found seeking employment through every part of the world? They are to be found making roads in Scotland and digging canals in the poisonous marshes of New Orleans." ("Discussion in Dublin Corporation on Repeal of the Union," in 1843, p. 58) The Times of the 26th of June, 1845, in an article to which I will refer hereafter, says "The Irishman is disposed to work."
[70] "English in Ireland," vol. i., 441-446. The subsequent history of this Bill as related by Mr. Froude is interesting. It became law in 1727, but was practically ineffective. See Lecky's "Eighteenth Century," ii., 248.
[71] "English in Ireland," vol. ii., 113, 114.
[72] "English in Ireland," vol. ii., 114.
[73] "Irish Debates," vol. iii., 132.
[74] "Parliamentary Register," 17, 255.
[75] "Commercial Restraints," pp. 40-41. Speaking of the great distress in the years 1740 and 1741, Hely Hutchinson again deplores the inability of the Irish Parliament to alleviate the misery of the poor. "They (the Commons) could not have been insensible of the miseries of their fellow-creatures, many thousands of whom were lost in those years, some from absolute want and many from disorders occasioned by bad provisions. Why was no attempt made for their relief? Because the Commons knew that the evil was out of their reach, and the poor were not employed because they were discouraged by restrictive laws from working up the materials of their own country, and that agriculture could not be encouraged when the lower classes of the people were not enabled by their industry to purchase the produce of the farmer's labour."—("Commercial Restraints," pp. 47-48.)
[76] "Commercial Restraints," pp. 210, 211.