William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

There is a story, uncertain as to date and origin, which picturesquely describes Pitt’s indebtedness to the author of “The Wealth of Nations.”[323] Adam Smith had been invited to meet the young Prime Minister at dinner; but some mischance delayed his arrival. Nevertheless, the guests patiently waited for him, and on his entrance Pitt exclaimed, “Nay, we will stand until you are seated; for we are all your scholars.” The compliment came with none the less graciousness because the father of Political Economy had in his work incautiously defined a statesman as “that insidious and crafty animal.” Pitt was now to give a new connotation to the word. Almost alone among the politicians of the eighteenth century, he had set himself to gain a store of knowledge which would enable him to cope with the increasingly complex problems of his craft; and thus, in an age when a university degree, the grand tour, and London club-life were held to be a sufficient preparation for a political career, he came forth like a Minerva fully armed at all points.

Among the practical questions to which the Scottish thinker turned the attention of his age, none was more important than those dealing with the relations between England and her American colonies, the desirability of an unfettered trade with France, and the need of a close union with Ireland. The first of these questions had been disposed of by war, and the second will engage our attention in a later chapter. On the Irish question Adam Smith strongly advocated union with Great Britain as conferring on the smaller island the boons which had breathed new life into Scotland, namely, freedom of trade and deliverance from an oppressive dominant caste.

These contentions must have secured the approval of Pitt; for the outlines of his policy both towards Ireland and France bear a striking resemblance to those sketched in “The Wealth of Nations,” with this important difference, that after the gain of independence by the Irish Legislature in 1782 the union of the two Parliaments was clearly impossible for the present. We therefore find Pitt turning his attention to the two topics which then chiefly agitated public opinion in Ireland, viz., the reform of Parliament and the fiscal relations to Great Britain. In order to understand Pitt’s handling of these problems it is necessary briefly to review the course of Anglo-Irish affairs.

The story of the dealings of England with the sister isle in the years 1688–1778 is one that it is painful to contemplate. The efforts to dragoon the Catholic Irish out of their creed, or to grind them into the lowest stratum of society, produced a race hatred of which we are still reaping the dire harvest. The Celt broods over the past; and his memory clings round the days when Papists were excluded from Parliament, from the possession of freehold estates, from the professions and from juries; when they might not act as guardians or possess a horse worth more than £5; and when their Protestant neighbours on tendering £5 could take any horse that pleased them. All this and far more may be read in the pages of Lecky. As for the ruffianly enactments of the Irish penal code, many of them were so monstrous as to bring their own cure. In the latter half of the eighteenth century even the arrogant Protestant squirearchy of Ireland found it impossible or undesirable to enforce them.

The growth of principles of toleration and enlightenment which marked the years 1760–80 had some effect even on the nominees of Protestant landlords and borough-mongers who formed the bulk of the Irish Parliament. It is a curious fact that even the narrowest and most bigoted of governing castes cannot wholly resist the tendencies of the times; and the Dublin Parliament, representing only a part even of the Protestant minority of Irishmen, was no more able to keep out new ideas than the members of the pocket boroughs of Britain could withstand the Reform movement of 1830–32. The infiltration of novel principles into the Irish Legislature was slower and more partial, inasmuch as that body misrepresented even more ludicrously the opinions of the mass of Irishmen.[324] It had long been swayed by a clique of politicians who were termed “Undertakers,” because they undertook its manipulation, ostensibly in the interests of the British Government, but really in their own. The traditions of the past and the determination of the members of the Protestant Established Church to keep the Government in their own hands, formed a massive barrier against change. Yet the dissolving touch of the Time-Spirit and the shocks of war were at work upon that barrier; and when the war with the American colonies and France strained the resources of Great Britain and Ireland past endurance, it showed signs of giving way on two questions, the one religious, the other fiscal. In the year 1778, Catholics who took the oath of allegiance were allowed to become in effect owners of land, that is, they might hold land on lease for 999 years. Further, the odious temptations formerly held out to sons of Catholics to abjure their creed were also abrogated. That year therefore seemed to be the beginning of an epoch of toleration, which it was the ardent desire of Pitt to crown with an act of justice too long delayed.

At present, however, we are concerned mainly with his attempt to reform the fiscal relations between the two islands. Until the year 1778 Irishmen were still in the state of economic vassalage to England which the Parliaments of William III had forcibly imposed. In some respects, especially in regard to the woollen industry, they were now worse off than in that time of humiliation. The enactment of 1699, which absolutely forbade the export of her woollen goods, hopelessly crippled an otherwise promising industry. Nor was this all. Her staple product, wool, might not be sent to foreign lands lest their manufacturers might benefit, and become rivals to ours. That fear was not wholly groundless in the case of France; for French weavers found that Irish wool supplied the qualities lacking in their own wool. The result was the rise of an extensive smuggling trade in that article from Ireland to France, which the Government utterly failed to stop.

The outbreak of war with the American colonies, as I have said, brought all these questions to an acute phase; and in 1776 the British Government so far relaxed the prohibitions on export as to allow Irish woollens to be exported for the clothing of the Irish troops serving away from their own country. At the same time Irish fishermen were admitted to a share in the Newfoundland and other fisheries from which they had been excluded.

Nothing, however, was done for the most important of Irish manufactures. The linen industry had not been severely hampered by the British Government. While prohibiting the export of fine linens, and of sail-cloth, in the supposed interests of British manufacturers, the British Government granted bounties on the coarse linens exported from Ireland; and up to the year 1771 that industry had greatly prospered. Thereafter it underwent a serious decline. So alarming was the shrinkage of trade and the rise of Ireland’s debt, that in 1778 Lord North’s Ministry was fain to propose the abolition of many of the fiscal disabilities which sapped her strength. She was to be allowed to send her products to the British colonies and to receive theirs directly in return; but, in order to allay the fears of British manufacturers, the old restrictions on the Irish woollen trade remained in force. Nothing, however, could allay those fears. At once loud complaints were raised from Aberdeen to Plymouth, so that North gave up nearly all his proposals; and Ireland gained little or nothing from his well meant efforts, except that ships built in Ireland thenceforth counted as British-built, and could receive bounties granted for the fisheries.[325]

Where reason and statesmanship had failed, force was to succeed. The utter inability of the British Government to defend Ireland against threatened French invasions furnished the pretext for the formation of powerful Volunteer corps, consisting solely of Protestants, and therefore especially strong in Ulster. The Presbyterians of that province, smarting under the civic disabilities imposed by the old Test Act, and under an equally archaic system of commerce, demanded redress of these grievances, in the latter of which the more lethargic Romanists gave them increasing support. Religious antipathies were forgotten in the face of Ireland’s urgent needs. The governing coterie at Dublin Castle failed either to check the movement or to revive the old schisms. It seemed that the intolerable burdens of the British fiscal system were about to mould the jarring elements of Irish society into the unity that marks a nation.

Though they failed to reach that far-off goal, they for the present won a noteworthy success. By combining to refrain from the purchase of British goods they dealt a severe blow at the system thrust upon them. Nor did they abstain from threats of force. The Volunteers paraded the streets of Dublin with cannon bearing the motto, “Free Trade—or this.” In face of an overwhelming opposition, the Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Carlisle, advised the British Government to give way; and at the close of the year 1779, and early in 1780, a series of enactments was passed at Westminster withdrawing the prohibitions on the export of woollen goods and glass from Ireland. Commerce with the British colonies was now also provisionally thrown open to Irish merchants, and they were admitted to a share in the Levant trade.