The following extracts, taken from a mass of contemporaneous documents, will give some idea of their condition.
"From the time," says Hely Hutchinson, "of this prohibition [of the woollen manufactures] no Parliament was held in Ireland till the year 1703. Five years were suffered to elapse before any opportunity was given to apply a remedy to the many evils which such a prohibition must necessarily have occasioned. The linen trade was then not thoroughly established in Ireland; the woollen manufacture was the staple trade, and wool the principal material of that kingdom. The consequences of the prohibition appear in the session of 1713. The Commons lay before Queen Anne a most affecting representation containing, to use their own words, 'a true state of our deplorable condition,' protesting that no groundless discontent was the motive for that application, but a deep sense of the evil state of their country, and of the further mischiefs they have reason to fear will fall upon it if not timely prevented. They set forth the vast decay and loss of its trade, its being almost exhausted of coin that they are hindered from earning their livelihoods, and from maintaining their own manufactures; that their poor have thereby become very numerous; that great numbers of Protestant families have been constrained to remove out of the kingdom, as well into Scotland as into the dominions of foreign princes and states; and that their foreign trade and its returns are under such restrictions and discouragements as to be then become in a manner impracticable, although that kingdom had by its blood and treasure contributed to secure the plantation trade to the people of England.
"In a further Address to the Queen, laid before the Duke of Ormonde, then Lord-Lieutenant, by the House, with its Speaker, they mention the distressed condition of that kingdom, and more especially of the industrious Protestants, by the almost total loss of trade and decay of their manufactures, and, to preserve the country from utter ruin, apply for liberty to export their linen manufactures to the Plantations.
"In a subsequent part of this session the Commons resolve that, by reason of the great decay of trade and discouragement of the manufactures of this kingdom, many poor tradesmen were reduced to extreme want and beggary. This resolution was agreed to nem. con., and the Speaker, Mr. Broderick, then his Majesty's Solicitor-General, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, in his speech at the end of the session, informs the Lord-Lieutenant that 'the representation of the Commons was, as to the matters contained in it, the unanimous voice and consent of a very full House, and that the soft and gentle tones used by the Commons in laying the distressed condition of the kingdom before his Majesty, showed that their complaints proceeded not from querulousness, but from a necessity of seeking redress.'"[96]
In his proposal for the use of Irish manufactures, which was published in 1720, Dean Swift says: "The Scripture tells us that oppression makes a wise man mad, therefore, consequently speaking, the reason why some men are not mad is because they are not wise. However, it were to be wished that oppression would in time teach a little wisdom to fools."[97] "Whoever travels in this country and observes the face of nature, and the faces and habits and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity is professed."[98] Nicholson, an Englishman, translated from the Bishopric of Carlisle to that of Derry, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, written in the same year, gives a similar account of the prevailing destitution: "Never did I behold in Picardy, Westphalia, and Scotland, such dismal marks of hunger and want as appeared in the countenances of most of the poor creatures I met with on the road." He states that one of his carriage horses having been killed by accident, it was surrounded by "fifty or sixty famished cottagers, struggling desperately to obtain a morsel of flesh for themselves and their children."[99] Swift, writing in 1727, says: "The conveniency of ports and harbours, which nature has bestowed so liberally on this country, is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon."[100] "Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard of, either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of exporting their native commodities and manufactures wherever they pleased, except to countries at war with their own Prince or State; yet this privilege, by the mere superiority of power, is refused us in the most momentous parts of our commerce; besides an Act of Navigation, to which we never consented, pinned down upon us, rigorously executed, and a thousand other unexampled circumstances, as grievous as they are invidious to mention."[101] "If we do flourish it must be against every law of nature and reason, like the thorn of Glastonbury, that blossoms in the midst of the winter."[102] "The miserable dress, diet, and dwelling of the people, the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom, the old seats of the nobility in ruins, and no new ones in their stead, the families of farmers, who pay great rents, living in filth and nastiness, upon butter-milk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receive them. These, indeed, may be comfortable sights to an English spectator, who comes for a short time only to learn the language, and returns back to his own country whence he finds all his wealth transmitted.
"Nostra miseria magna est.
There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland which is not a logical demonstration of its poverty."[103] "Ireland is the poorest of all civilised countries, with every advantage to make it one of the richest."[104]
"The great scarcity of corn," says Hely Hutchinson, "had been so universal in this kingdom in the years 1728 and 1729 as to expose thousands of families to the utmost necessities, and even to the danger of famine, many artificers and housekeepers having been obliged to beg for bread in the streets of Dublin."[105] This is probably the distress to which Swift, writing in 1729, alludes: "Our present calamities are not to be represented. You can have no notion of them without beholding them. Numbers of miserable objects crowd our doors, begging us to take their wares at any price to prevent their families from immediate starving."[106]
"In twenty years," says Mr. Lecky, "there were at least three or four of absolute famine."[107]