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A History of Ireland.Volume 2 by Eleanor Hull 1931 |
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XII.—COMMERCIAL DISABILITIES |
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; | If anything could have been added to complete the ruin of the country it was by the imposition of heavy and disabling trade regulations at the moment when the industries of the towns were being crippled by the loss of the industrial midde-classes of their inhabitants. The Penal Laws were the work of the ascendancy party in the Dublin Parliament, inspired, not so much by actual questions of religion as by the jealous determination to retain all authority and all property in Protestant hands, for which the difference of religion formed a convenient excuse; but the Trade Laws were the action of the English Parliament, urged on by the constant appeals of English merchants, who thought they saw in the growing prosperity of Irish trade and industries a challenge to their own supremacy in the mercantile world. In consequence of the constantly increasing concentration of all manufactures and trade in Protestant hands, owing to the Penal restrictions imposed at their own request, it was on this new industrial class that the Trade Laws fell most hardly. It shows into what a position of helplessness the Dublin Parliament had drifted, that though it was the close borough of a small Protestant minority, even this favoured minority was unable to influence the operation of English laws directed to the limitation or destruction of those industries by the preservation of which in their own hands against Catholic competition they had hoped to grow rich. Up to the time of Henry VIII, and even of the Stuarts, Irish trade had been encouraged; all trade regulations passed in the English Parliament applying equally to Ireland. Incidentally this shows that from an early date Irish industries were of sufficient importance to demand the attention of the English legislature. Several commercial statutes were passed in the reign of Edward III regulating the importation of woollen cloth and permitting Irish merchants to bring their merchandise to the staple of England without paying any but Irish customs In the same reign all clothworkers of whatever country were invited equally into all parts of the British Isles, including Ireland, and such prohibitions as were imposed in the sixteenth century aimed at the encouragement of the home woollen manufacture by limiting the export of the raw material, though in the end this tended to the decline of the industry. During this period there was a considerable volume of merchandise even with the independent parts of the country. The roads were good, and produce was brought to market in numberless centres all over the country, either by carts or by the river waterways. Provisions, vegetables, fish, and woollens were freely distributed to town-dwellers by the country people of the surrounding districts. Corn, barley, and oats were in plenty, and flax was grown for the linen industry. The people were well and solidly clad in the excellent friezes and mantles made by their own kindred, and the new staples founded in several important centres during the years 1616-17 gave employment to many workers and attracted English capital into the country. Wealthy landowners, like the Earl of Cork in the South, the Duke of Ormonde in Kilkenny and Clonmel, and Sir T. Roper near Dublin encouraged spinning and weaving on their estates and opened works that gave employment to their tenantry. During the Stuart period the settlement of numbers of French Huguenot weavers in the country gave a great stimulus to weaving, especially of silks and hosiery, while others of these refugees set up factories for the woollen manufacture or founded banking businesses. But these industries underwent many vicissitudes. Wentworth, during his Viceroyalty, saw in the discouragement of the woollen and clothing trades a means to hold the Irish dependent on the Crown by forcing them to resort to English markets to supply the needs that had hitherto been met at home. He feared that if the Irish continued to manufacture their own wool they would beat their English rivals out of the trade by underselling them, "which," he says, "they were well able to do."[1] But he encouraged the exportation of raw wool, which not only aided the English clothiers, but brought in double customs to the Crown, the wool exported being returned in the form of manufactured goods; "a reason of State" which commended itself to the Viceroy, whose main desire was to increase the King's revenue. [1] Letters and despatches of the Earl of Stafford, William Knowler (1739),
ii, 19. In three years after the Restoration an average of 61,000 head of cattle had been annually brought over from Ireland to England, and a considerable part of the landlords and farmers devoted themselves to cattle-breeding on a large scale. The whole country was suddenly plunged into poverty and discontent. Ormonde, who was one of the worst sufferers, opposed the Bills at every stage, pointing out that Ireland was only just recovering from a long period of war and that the prohibition on the export of cattle meant practically a universal cessation of industry. But Ormonde's great estates were regarded with jealousy by English land-owners, and in spite of the resistance of the King to the measure, it passed into law. The immediate effect of the Cattle Acts upon the woollen industry was to keep in the country large flocks of sheep which had formerly been sheared and then sold for food. How to get rid of the accumulating stocks of wool became a problem for the Irish farmer and he only partially solved it by a number of devices, such as a clandestine trade with foreign countries, and the revival of the home clothing trade. A certain quantity of wool was still sent into England in spite of the high licensing duties. But all false laws affecting commerce, whether the result of wrong theories or of provincial and trade jealousies, must in the end defeat their object. Even in the present day, Governments are still debating what are the soundest principles of world trade, and a great variety of opinions is held regarding them; in the seventeenth century theories on the subject had hardly begun to be considered at all. The whole colonial system was new. Hitherto commerce had been a matter of private adventure rather than the concern of the State. The farmer's idea that open competition will capture his markets is natural enough, even if it is erroneous; "protection" is still daily being debated on both sides of the Irish Channel. England in the seventeenth century was neither before nor behind the rest of Europe in her belief that in protecting her own farmers from competition, she was carrying out an obvious duty. But while for the moment it seemed that these laws would ruin Ireland, they had an immediate adverse effect in England. The impoverished Irish farmers could not pay their rents and, in consequence, landlords could not meet their taxes. The King's revenue at once went down, and the effort to make Ireland self-supporting by customs and excise came to an end. The Irish began to turn their attention to foreign avenues of export, and a flourishing trade with Holland in fat cattle and butter sprang up, which threatened to rival the English exports in value and pushed the produce of the English farmer out of the market. A revival of Irish shipping followed and Irish ships were seen at Dunkirk, Ostend, La Rochelle, and Nantes, laden with provisions, while Irish ports were busy with trade and ship-building. France took clandestinely all the wool with which Ireland could supply her, and in 1679 it was said that this trade had almost ruined the English industry. The English were purchasing back through France and Spain at an advanced rate the Irish goods that they would not allow into the country direct. A new trade of some importance sprang up between Ireland and the West Indian Plantations, which deprived England of much of her provision trade with her own colonists. This fresh opening helped to tide the country over its period of distress; and had no further impediment been placed in the way there was every sign that the initiative of the Irish farmers and merchants would have secured permanent markets abroad. But again the jealousy of English traders stepped in and the rising volume of Irish commerce was crushed by the Navigation Acts of 1670-71, which prohibited a large number of commodities, comprising practically the whole available produce of the Plantations, from being imported direct into Ireland. They had to be first landed in England and so pay double dues and charges at the ports; this checked the entry of goods from abroad, and in consequence the profits on goods sent out from home. As, after the Revolution, these Navigation Laws were reinforced in a still more prohibitive form, they eventually shut Ireland off from her best foreign markets and proved disastrous to her chances of commercial progress. The Navigation Laws were not passed with any direct intention of applying them to Ireland. They were consequent upon the immense expansion of the known world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the discovery of the West Indies and of North and South America. The formation of the East India Company to open up the vast resources of India at the beginning of the seventeenth century brought about new commercial relations in every direction and called upon the Governments of the day to pass legislation to regulate the conduct of navigation and commerce in every part of the world. England had emerged from the position of an island-state into a world power; and as the enterprises of Spain and France over-seas began to decrease, those of England and Holland took their place. It was against Holland that the first Navigation Laws were framed, these two powers being in a position to dispute with each other the carrying trade and the mastery of the seas. At the same time a colonial policy was gradually formed, by which, in return for protection by the navy of England, the colonies were bound only to encourage such industries as ministered to the needs of the mother country and did not interfere with her home industries. As England defended these colonies, which had no navies of their own, by revenue from her home industries, it was urged that it was only just that nothing should be done by them to diminish those industries. The over-seas possessions were to exist simply as feeders to the motherland; all trade with other countries being strictly forbidden.[2] Hitherto, Ireland had usually been treated as part of the British Isles in regard to trade regulations, but with the new conception of a colonial policy accepted as part of the considered policy of the country, it began to be argued that as Ireland was, like the colonies, defended by the British navy without any charge to herself (for Ireland had never been taxed for naval defence) she stood towards England in the position of a colony and should come under the same laws as regards navigation. Like America and the West Indies, she must accept a subordinate position in all industries likely to be adverse in their results upon English manufactures. It seemed but just to the great mercantile interests of Britain that they should so regulate the trade of their dependencies that these should not interfere with their own existing home industries. [2] George Louis Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-65 (1907); The Origins
of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (1908) ; J. R. Seeley, The Growth
of British Policy (1895). [3] Quoted George O'Brien, The Economic History of Ireland in the Eighteenth
Century (1918), p. 182. [5] George O'Brien, op. cit., p. 189. [6] There was a fresh outburst of emigration in 1772-73, owing to a decline
in the linen manufacture. [7] Archbishop King to Mr. Nicholson, December 20, 1712 ; Hugh Boulter,
Letters (1769), 222-223 ; 225-226. It was in the year 1776 that Arthur Young, a trained and intelligent agriculturist, began his celebrated tour in Ireland for the purpose of enquiring into the condition of farming in the country. He travelled throughout the provinces with introductions to all the principal gentlemen residing on their properties, and he has left a detailed and valuable record of his observations. He shows that the "baleful monopolizing spirit of commerce" still governed the commercial relations between England and her Dependencies, whether in the East or in Ireland. It required the War of American Independence (which was raging when Young wrote) to awaken England to the results of her narrow trading policy towards her colonies, and under which America, the Indies, and Ireland were equally suffering. "Trade is an admirable thing, but a trading government a most pernicious one." Young speaks much of the grinding poverty of the cottiers struggling under heavy rents, and of the system of "rundale" or sub-division of farms; of the oppressive custom of "conacre," by which a scrap of land was rented for a season by a cottier to raise potatoes and paid for in labour, only the balance being settled in money, if settled at all. The poor population was content to feed on potatoes and sour milk, with now and then a herring, meat being eaten only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. Where all transactions were paid for in labour there was little money to purchase food or necessaries. The cottages were of the most wretched description, filthy, crowded and unhealthy. A series of famines showed the low level at which the people were existing; they culminated in the "hunger-fever" of 1741, in which 400,000 persons perished. The scathing pamphlets poured out by Swift, and the incisive questions suggested by Bishop Berkeley in The Querist indicate the feeling of the more humane observers at the condition of the country; but little was attempted by way of relief. The peasant began to eke out his scanty means of livelihood by crossing to England to take part in harvesting or to Newfoundland to take part in the fisheries, often walking great distances to and from the ports. The Devon Commission of 1843-45 gives the most harrowing accounts of the extreme poverty and extreme patience of the Irish agricultural labourer in the years immediately preceding the great famine, and this verdict is echoed by every independent traveller in Ireland during that and the preceding century. The lack of any stimulus to exertion and the want of employment were, no doubt, one cause of the universal indolence and slovenliness in work and habits which is noticed and commented upon by every traveller passing through Ireland during the eighteenth century. The numerous holidays and the love of sport also contributed to foster this tendency. Drunkenness and beggary abounded, and the quantity of spirits consumed rose steadily towards the close of the century. "Every seventh house in the City of Dublin and its suburbs is occupied in the sale of spirituous liquors," writes an observer signing himself "Agricola" in 1791; and another tract of the same period would place the drinking houses even higher. " One-third of the shops of Dublin are vendors of spirits," it declares in 1780.[9] Another writer in 1795 speaks of the "vast number of public houses in the suburbs, which perpetually resounded with the noise of riot and intemperance." Attempts were made to suppress some of them, but the magistrates were too corrupt to refuse licences.[10] The average annual manufacture of spirits for the four years ending March, 1780, was 1,768,042 gallons; but in the year ending January, 1808, it had risen to 5,704,158 gallons, illicit stills being greatly on the increase.[11] Arthur Young is one of the few visitors who give a more encouraging report. He thinks that drunkenness ought no longer to be a reproach to the poor, and that "though drinking and duelling have long been alleged against the gentlemen of Ireland," things had changed for the better. [9] Quoted by George O'Brien, The Economic History of Ireland in the
Eighteenth Century (1918), pp. 39-43. At the same time there were in many parts of the country enterprising and patriotic landlords who were making extensive experiments in husbandry or in establishing spinning and weaving industries for the benefit of their tenants. Large sums of money were being laid out by such men as Robert French near Tuam, in reclaiming bog-land and erecting spinning mills, or by S. J. Jeffreys, whose mills at Blarney were giving employment to large numbers of hands, or in Armagh, where the town had been rebuilt in the course of a few years by the Protestant Primate Robinson. These are only examples of the improvements which were being undertaken by spirited landowners all over the country. At Cullen House, County Meath, Chief Baron Foster had turned a waste of furze land into soil capable of cultivation; at Westport, Lord Altramont had built houses and introduced looms, setting on foot an extensive linen manufacture and breeding improved types of cattle by introducing the best breeds from England; on Lough Swilly, Robert Alexander had enlarged the fisheries in a few years to an almost incredible extent. Wherever an enlightened landlord lived on his property the condition of the cottiers improved rapidly and the general opinion of their probity and honesty seems to have been high. An interesting experiment made by Sir William Osborne near Clonmel, who settled some begging Whiteboys on his land and had no reason to regret his act,[12] shows that many of the youths who were "out" in the risings could, with a little encouragement, have been reclaimed. There have always been in Ireland good proprietors spending their lives among their own people and laying out money in improvements whose beneficial work has been often overlooked in the condemnation passed on men of another type. Arthur Young was struck by the number of these improving properties that he met with in his journeys through the country. Unfortunately, there were also a considerable number of absentee landlords who not only drew wealth out of the country to be spent in England and abroad, but whose absence threw the whole management of estates into the hands of agents and stewards, who had little interest in the condition of the tenants beyond the extraction of as large a rent as was possible for the owner. Absenteeism had developed to a surprising extent, and many of the highest offices in the land were occupied by men who lived always out of the country.[13] [12] Arthur Young, Tour in Ireland (1792), 1, 43, 167, 261-272, 312,
313, 397-399. The absentee proprietors not only drew from £600,000 to £700,000 annually out of the country, but they escaped the Irish taxes; and though Acts restraining Irish gentry from living out of Ireland had been passed from the time of Richard II, and large estates had been forfeited to the Crown in punishment of delinquents, nothing availed to check the tendency. It decreased to a certain extent during the years of independence, when many of the nobility and gentry who were in the habit of spending their winters in London took houses in Dublin; but after the Union, these officials relapsed into their old ways. In 1804 it was estimated that nearly £2,000,000 was being annually drawn out of Ireland in gold with no return made towards defraying the national expenses. The Irish pension list had always been a scandal. From the time of Charles II pensions to favourites, male and female, often too disgraceful to place on the English pension list, had been paid out of Irish resources. In 1761 these pensions amounted to over £64,000; in 1779 they had increased to over £84,000 per annum.[14] [14] An Enquiry into the Legality of Pensions on the Irish Establishment,
by Alexander McAuley, 1763. [15] J. Mullalla, A View of Irish Affairs, 1688-1795, i, 325-326. [16] T. Newenham, op. cit., 33, 202, 206. |
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