The Commercial Restraints of Ireland Part 10

If any of the resources which have hitherto enabled her to hear this prodigious drain are injurious to the manufactures both of England and Ireland, and highly advantageous to the rivals and enemies of both, is it wise in Great Britain by persevering in an inpracticable system of commercial policy, repugnant to the natural course and order of things, to suffer so very considerable a part of the empire to remain in such a situation?

The experiment of an equal and reasonable system of commerce is worth making; that which has been found the best conductor in philosophy is the surest guide in commerce.

Would you consult persons employed in the trade? They have in one respect an interest opposite to that of the public. To narrow the compet.i.tion is advantageous to the dealers,[299] but prejudicial to the public. If Edward I. had not preferred the general welfare of his subjects to the interested opinions and pet.i.tions of the traders, all merchant traders (who were then mostly strangers) would have been sent away from London,[300] for which purpose the Commons offered him the fiftieth part of their movables.[301]

What was the information given by the trading towns in 1697 and 1698 on the subject of the woollen manufacture of Ireland? Several of their[302]

pet.i.tions state that the woollen manufacture was _set-up_ in Ireland, as if it had been lately introduced there; and one of them goes so far as to represent the particular time and manner of introducing it. "Many of the poor of that kingdom," says this extraordinary pet.i.tion, "during the late rebellion there, fled into the west of England, where they were put to work in the woollen manufacture to learn that trade; and since the reduction of Ireland _endeavours were used to set up_ those manufactures there.[303]

Would any man suppose that this could relate to a manufacture in which this kingdom excelled before the time of Edward III., which had been the subject of so many laws in both kingdoms, and which was always cultivated here, and before this rebellion with more success than after it? The trading towns gave accounts totally inconsistent of the state of this manufacture at that time in England: from Exeter it is represented as greatly decayed and discouraged[304] in those parts, and diminished in England. But a pet.i.tion from Leeds represents this manufacture as having very much increased[305] since the revolution in all its several branches, to the general interest of England; and yet, in two days after the clothiers from three towns in Gloucestershire a.s.sert that the trade has decayed, and that the poor are almost starved.[306] The Commissioners of Trade differ in opinion from them and by their report it appears that the woollen manufacture was then very much increased and improved.[307] The traders have sometimes mistaken their own interests on those subjects. In 1698 a pet.i.tion for prohibiting the importation from Ireland of all worsted and woollen yarn, represents that the poor of England are ready to perish by this importation;[308] and in 1739 several pet.i.tions were preferred against taking off the duties[309] from worsted and bay yarn exported from Ireland to England. But this has been done in the manner before mentioned, and is now acknowledged to be highly useful to England.

Trading people have ever aimed at exclusive privileges. Of this there are two extraordinary instances: in the year 1698 two pet.i.tions were preferred from Folkstone and Aldborough, stating a singular grievance that they suffered from Ireland, "by the Irish catching herrings _at Waterford and Wexford_,[310] and sending them to the Streights, and thereby _forestalling_ and ruining pet.i.tioners' markets;" but these pet.i.tioners had the _hard lot_ of having motions in their favour rejected.

I wish that the fullest information may be had in this important investigation, but between the inconsistent accounts and opinions that will probably be given, experience only can decide; and experience will demonstrate that the removal of those restraints will promote the prosperity of both kingdoms.

I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.

Sixth Letter.

_Dublin, 1st September, 1779._

MY LORD,

By the proceedings in the English Parliament, in the year 1698, and the speech of the Lords Justices to the Irish Parliament in that year, it appears that the linen was intended to be given to this country as an equivalent for the woollen manufacture. The opinion that this supposed equivalent was accepted as such by Ireland is mistaken. The temperament which the Commons of Ireland in their address said they hoped to find was no more than a partial and temporary duty on exportation, as an experiment only, and not as an established system, reserving the exportation of frieze, then much the most valuable part to Ireland.[311] The English intended the linen manufacture as a compensation, and declared that they thought it would be much more advantageous to Ireland[312] than the woollen trade.

This idea of an equivalent has led several persons, and, among the rest, two very able writers[313] into mistakes from the want of information in some facts which are necessary to be known, that this transaction may be fully understood, and, therefore, ought to be particularly stated.

The Irish had before this period applied themselves to the linen trade.

This appears by two of their statutes, in the reign of Elizabeth, one laying a duty on the export of flax and linen yarn,[314] and the other making it felony to ship them without paying such duty.[315] In the reign of Charles I. great pains were taken by Lord Strafford to encourage this manufacture, and in the succeeding reign[316] the great and munificent efforts of the first duke of Ormond were crowned with merited success. The blasts of civil dissensions nipped those opening buds of industry; and, when the season was more favourable, it is probable that, like England, they found the woollen manufacture a more useful object of national pursuit, which may be collected from the address of the English House of Commons, "that they so unwillingly promote the linen trade,"[317] and it was natural for a poor and exhausted country to work up the materials of which it was possessed.

In 1696 the English had given encouragement to the manufactures of hemp and flax in Ireland, but without stipulating any restraint of the export of woollen goods. The English Act made in that year recites that great sums of money were yearly exported out of England for the purchasing of hemp, flax, and linen, and the productions thereof, which might be prevented by being supplied from Ireland, and allows natives of England and Ireland to import into England, free of all duties,[318] hemp and flax, and all the productions thereof. In the same session[319] a law pa.s.sed in England for the more effectually preventing the exportation of wool, and for encouraging the importation thereof from Ireland. Both those manufactures were under the consideration of Parliament this session, and it was thought, from enlarged views of the welfare of both kingdoms, that England should encourage the linen without discouraging the woollen manufacture of Ireland. There was no further encouragement given by England to our linen manufacture for some years after the year 1696.[320]

_In 1696 there was no equivalent whatever given_ for the prohibition of the export of our woollen manufactures.

It is true the a.s.surances given by both Houses of Parliament in England for the encouragement of our linen trade were as strong as words could express; but was this intended encouragement, if immediately carried into execution, an equivalent to Ireland for what she had lost? Let it first be considered whether it was an equivalent at the time of the prohibition.

The woollen was then the princ.i.p.al manufacture and trade of Ireland. That it was then considered as her staple, appears from the several Acts of Parliament before mentioned, and from the attempt made in 1695 by the Irish House of Commons to lay a duty on all old and new drapery imported.

The amount of the export proves[321] the value of the trade to so poor a country as Ireland, and makes it probable that she then clothed her own people. The address of the English House of Lords shows that this manufacture was "growing" amongst us, and the goodness of our own materials "for making _all manner_ of cloth."[322] And the English Act of 1698 is a voucher that this manufacture was then in so flourishing a state as to give apprehensions, however ill founded, of its rivalling England in foreign markets. The immediate consequences to Ireland showed the value of what she lost; many thousands of manufacturers were obliged to leave this kingdom for want of employment; many parts of the southern and western counties were so far depopulated that they have not yet recovered a reasonable number of inhabitants; and the whole kingdom was reduced to the greatest poverty and distress.[323] The linen trade of Ireland was then of little consideration, compared with the woollen.[324] The whole exportation of linens, in 1700,[325] amounted only in value to 14,112. It was an experiment subst.i.tuted in the place of an established trade.

The English ports in Asia, Africa, and America were then shut against our linens; and, when they were opened[326] for our white and brown linens, the restraints of imports from thence to Ireland made that concession of less value, and she still found it her interest to send, for the most part, her linens to England. The linen could not have been a compensation for the woollen manufacture, which employs by far a greater number of hands, and yields much greater profit to the public, as well as to the manufacturers.[327] Of this manufacture there are not many countries which have the primum in equal perfection with England and Ireland; and no countries, taking in the various kinds of those extensive manufactures, so fit for carrying them on. There cannot be many rivals in this trade: in the linen they are most numerous. Other parts of the world are more fit for it than Ireland, and many equally so.

If this could be supposed to have been an equivalent at the time, or to have become so by its success, it can no longer be considered in that light. The commercial state of Europe is greatly altered. Ireland can no longer enjoy the benefit intended for her. It was intended that the great sums of money remitted out of England to foreign countries in this branch of commerce should all centre in Ireland, and that England should be supplied with linen from thence;[328] but foreigners now draw great sums from England in this trade, and rival the Irish in the English markets.

The Russians are becoming powerful rivals to the Irish, and undersell them in the coa.r.s.e kinds of linen. This is now the staple manufacture of Scotland. England, that had formerly cultivated this manufacture without success, and had taken linens[329] from France to the amount of 700,000 yearly, has now made great progress in it. The encouragement of this trade in England and Scotland has been long a princ.i.p.al object to the British Legislature; and the nation that encouraged us to the undertaking has now become our rival in it.[330] That this is not too strong an expression will appear by considering two British statutes, one of which[331] has laid a duty on the importation of Irish sail-cloth into Great Britain, as long as the bounties should be paid on the exportation from[332] Ireland, which obliged us to discontinue them; and the other[333] has given a bounty on the exportation of _British_ chequered and striped linens exported out of _Great Britain_ to Africa, America, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, the island of Minorca, or the East Indies. This is now become a very valuable part of the manufacture, which Great Britain, by the operation of this bounty, keeps to herself. The bounties on the exportation of all other linen, which she has generously given to ours as well as to her own,[334] operate much more strongly in favour of the latter;[335] the expense of freight, insurance, commission, &c., in sending the linens from Ireland to England has been computed at four per cent.; and if this computation is right, when the British linens obtain 12 per cent., the full amount of the premium, the Irish do not receive above eight. Those bounties, though acknowledged to be a favour to Ireland, give Great Britain a further and a very important advantage in this trade, by inducing us to send all our linens to England, from whence other countries are supplied.

The great hinge upon which the stipulation on the part of England, in the year 1698, turned was, that England should give every possible encouragement to the linen and hempen manufactures in Ireland.

Encouraging those manufactures in another country was not compatible with this intention. The course of events made it necessary to do this in Scotland;[336] the course of trade made it necessary for England to do the same. A commercial country must cultivate every considerable manufacture of which she has or can get the primum. These circ.u.mstances have totally changed the state of the question; and if it was reasonable and just that Ireland, in 1698, should have accepted of the linen in the place of the woollen manufactures, it deserves to be considered whether by the almost total change of the circ.u.mstances it is not now unreasonable and unjust.

America itself, the opening of whose markets[337] to Irish linens was thought to have been one of the princ.i.p.al encouragements to that trade, is now become a rival and an enemy; and when she puts off the latter character, will appear in the former with new force and infinite advantages.

The emigration for many years of such great mult.i.tudes of our linen manufacturers to America,[338] proves incontrovertibly that they can carry on their trade with more success in America than in Ireland. But let us examine the facts to determine whether the proposed encouragements have taken place. The declaration of the Lords of England for the encouragement of the linen manufacture of Ireland was "to all the advantage and profit that kingdom can be capable of;" and of the Commons, "that they shall be _always_ ready to give it their _utmost_ a.s.sistance." The speech of the Lords Justices shows the extent of this engagement, and promises the encouragement of England "to the linen and hempen manufactures of Ireland."

In the year 1705[339] liberty was given to the natives of England or Ireland to export from Ireland to the English plantations white and brown linens only, but no liberty given to bring in return any goods from thence to Ireland, which will appear from the account in the Appendix to have made this law of inconsiderable effect. In 1743 premiums were given on the exportation of English and Irish linens from Great Britain; and the bounty granted by Great Britain, in 1774, on flax seed imported into Ireland is a further proof of the munificent attention of Great Britain to our linen trade. But chequered, striped, printed, painted, stained, or dyed linens were not until lately admitted into the plantations from Ireland; and the statutes of Queen Anne,[340] laying duties at the rate of thirty per cent.

on such linens made in _foreign_ parts and imported into Great Britain, have been, rather by a forced construction, extended to Ireland, which is deprived of the British markets[341] for those goods, and, until the year 1777,[342] was excluded from the American markets also. But it is thought, as to chequered and striped linens, which are a valuable branch of the linen trade, that this Act will have little effect in favour of this country, from the operation of the before-mentioned British Act of the 10th G. 3, which, by granting a bounty on the exportation of those goods of the manufacture of Great Britain only gives a direct preference to the British linen manufacture before the Irish.

The hempen manufacture of Ireland has been, so far, _discouraged_ by Great Britain, that the Irish have totally abandoned the culture of hemp.[343]

I hope to be excused for weighing scrupulously a proposed equivalent, for which the receiver was obliged to part with the advantages of which he was possessed. The equivalent, given in 1667, for the almost entire exclusion of Ireland from the ports of England and America, was the exportation of our manufactures to foreign nations. The prohibition of 1699 was not altogether consistent with the equivalent of 1667; and from the equivalent of 1698 the superior encouragement since given to English and Scotch linen, and the discouragement to the chequer and stamped linen and sail-cloth of Ireland must make a large deduction. But why must one manufacture only be encouraged? The linen and the woollen trades of Ireland were formerly both encouraged by the legislatures of both kingdoms; they are now both equally encouraged in England.

If this single trade was found sufficient employment for 1,000,000 men who remained in this country at the time of this restraint (the contrary of which has been shown), it would require the interposition of more than human wisdom to divide it among 2,500,000 men at this day, and to send the mult.i.tude away satisfied.

No populous commercial country can subsist on one manufacture; if the world has ever produced such an instance I have not been able to find it.

Reason and experience demonstrate that, to make society happy, the members of it must be able to supply the wants of each other, as far as their country affords the means; and, where it does not, by exchanging the produce of their industry for that of their neighbours. When the former is discouraged, or the latter prevented, that community cannot be happy. If they are not allowed to send to other countries the manufactured produce of their own, the people who enjoy that liberty will undersell them in their own markets; the restrained manufacturers will be reduced to poverty, and will hang like paralytic limbs on the rest of the body.

If England's commercial system would have been incomplete, had she failed to cultivate any one princ.i.p.al manufacture of which she had or could obtain the material, what shall we say to the commercial state of that country, restrained in a manufacture of which she has the materials in abundance, and in which she had made great progress, and almost confined to one manufacture of which she has not the primum.

Manufactures, though they may flourish for a time, generally fail in countries that do not produce the princ.i.p.al materials of them. Of this there are many instances. Venice and the other Italian states carried on the woollen manufacture until the countries which produced the materials manufactured them, when the Italian manufactures declined, and dwindled into little consideration in comparison of their former splendour. The Flemings, from their vicinity to those countries that produced the materials, beat the Italians out of their markets. But when England cultivated that manufacture, the Flemings lost it. That this, and not oppression, was the cause, appears from the following state of the linen manufacture[344] there, because it consumes flax, the native produce of the soil; and it is much to be feared that those islands will be obliged to yield the superiority in this trade to other nations that have great extent of country, and sufficient land to spare for this impoverishing production.

That some parts of Ireland may produce good flax must be allowed, and also that parts of Flanders would produce fine wool. But though the legislature has for many years made it a capital object to encourage the growth of flax and the raising of flax-seed in this kingdom, yet it is obliged to pay above 9,000 yearly in premiums on the importation of flax-seed, which is now almost imported, and costs us between 70,000 and 80,000 yearly.

Flax farming, in any large quant.i.ty, is become a precarious and losing trade,[345] and those who have been induced to attempt it by premiums from the Linen Board have, after receiving those premiums, generally found themselves losers, and have declined that branch of tillage.

When the imported flax-seed is unsound and fails, in particular districts, which very frequently happens, the distress, confusion, and litigation that arise among manufacturers, farmers, retailers, and merchants, affords a melancholy proof of the dangerous consequences to a populous nation when the industry of the people and the hope of the rising year rest on a single manufacture, for the materials of which we must depend upon the courtesy and good faith of other nations.

Let me appeal to the experience of very near a century in the very instance now before you. A single manufacture is highly encouraged; it obtains large premiums, not only from the legislature of its own country, but from that of a great neighbouring kingdom; it becomes not only the first, but almost the sole national object; immense sums of money are expended in the cultivation of it,[346] and the success exceeds our most sanguine expectations. But look into the state of this country; you will find property circulating slowly and languidly, and in the most numerous cla.s.ses of your people no circulation or property at all. You will frequently find them in want of employment and of food, and reduced in a vast number of instances from the slightest causes to distress and beggary. All other manufacturers will continue spiritless, poor, and distressed, and derive from uncertain employment a precarious and miserable subsistence; they gain little by the success of the prosperous trade, the dealers in which are tempted to buy from that country to which they princ.i.p.ally sell; the disease of those morbid parts must spread through the whole body, and will at length reach the persons employed in the favoured manufacture. These will become poor and wretched, and discontented; they emigrate by thousands; in vain you represent the crime of deserting their country, the folly of forsaking their friends, the temerity of wandering to distant, and, perhaps, inhospitable climates; their despondency is deaf to the suggestions of prudence, and will answer, that they can no longer stay "where hope never comes," but will fly from these "regions of sorrow."[347]

Let me not be thought to undervalue the bounties and generosity of that great nation which has taken our linen trade under its protection. There is much ill-breeding, though, perhaps, some good sense, in the churlish reply of the philosopher to the request of the prince who visited his humble dwelling, and desired to know, and to gratify his wishes; that they were no more than this, that the prince should not stand between the philosopher and the sun. Had he been a man of the world he might have expressed the same idea with more address, though with less force and significance; he might have said, "I am sensible of your greatness and of your power; I have no doubts of your liberality; but Nature has abundantly given me all that I wish; intercept not one of her greatest gifts; allow me to enjoy the bounties of her hand, and the contentment of my own mind will furnish the rest."

I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.

Seventh Letter.

_Dublin, 3rd September, 1779._

MY LORD,

By comparing the restrictive law of 1699 with the statutes which had been previously enacted in England from the fifteenth year of the reign of Charles II., relative to the colonies, it appears that this restrictive law originated in a system of colonisation. The principle of that system was that the colonies should send their materials to England and take from thence her manufactures, and that the making those manufactures in the colonies should be prohibited or discouraged. But was it reasonable to extend this principle to Ireland? The climate, growth, and productions of the colonies were different from those of the parent country. England had no sugar-canes, coffee, dying stuff, and little tobacco. She took all those from her colonies only, and it was thought reasonable that they should take from her only the manufactures which she made. But in Ireland the climate, soil, growth, and productions are the same as in England, who could give no such equivalent to Ireland as she gave to America, and was so far from considering her when this system first prevailed, as a proper subject for such regulations, that she was allowed the benefits arising from those colonies equally with England, until the fifteenth year of the reign of King Charles II.[348] By an Act pa.s.sed in that year, Ireland had no longer the privilege of sending any of her exports, except servants, horses, victuals, and salt, to any of the colonies; the reasons are a.s.signed in the preamble "to make this kingdom a staple, not only of the commodities of those plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries and places for the supplying of them, and it being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade to themselves."[349] At the time of pa.s.sing this law, though less liberal ideas in respect of Ireland were then entertained, it went no further than not to extend to her the benefits of those colony regulations; but it was not then thought that this kingdom was a proper subject for any such regulations. The scheme of subst.i.tuting there, instead of the woollen, the linen trade, was not at that time thought of. The English were desirous to establish it among themselves, and by an Act of Parliament,[350] made in that year for encouraging the manufacture of linen, granted to all foreigners who shall set up in England the privileges of natural born subjects.

But it appears by the English Statute of the 7th and 8th of William III.,[351] which has been before stated, that this scheme had not succeeded in England, and from this act it is manifest that England considered itself as well as Ireland interested to encourage the linen manufacture there; and it does not then appear to have been thought just that Ireland should purchase this benefit for both, by giving up the exportation of any other manufacture. But in 1698 a different principle prevailed, in effect the same, so far as relates to the woollen manufacture, with that which had prevailed as to the commerce of the colonies. This is evident from the preamble of the English law,[352] made in 1699, "for as much as wool and woollen manufactures of cloth, serge, bays, kersies, and other stuffs, made or mixed with wool, are the greatest and most profitable commodities of this kingdom, on which the value of lands and the trade of the nation do chiefly depend, and whereas great quant.i.ties of like manufactures have of late been made and are daily increasing in the kingdom of Ireland, and _in the English plantations_ in America, and are exported from thence to foreign markets heretofore supplied from England, which will inevitably sink the value of lands, and tend to the ruin of the trade and woollen manufactures of this realm; for the prevention whereof and for the encouragement of the woollen manufactures in this kingdom, &c.

The ruinous consequences of the woollen manufactures of Ireland to the value of lands, trade, and manufactures of England, stated in this Act, are apprehensions that were entertained, and not events that had happened; and before those facts are taken for granted, I request the mischief recited in the Acts[353] made in England to prevent the importation of cattle dead or alive from Ireland, may be considered. The mischiefs stated in those several laws are supposed to be as ruinous to England as those recited in the Act of 1699, and yet are now allowed to be groundless apprehensions occasioned by short and mistaken views of the real interests of England. Sir W. Petty[354] demonstrates that the opinion entertained in England at the time of his prohibition of the import of cattle from Ireland was ill-founded; he calls it a strange conceit. If he was now living, he would probably consider the prohibition of our woollen exports as not having a much better foundation.

Connecting this preamble of the Act of 1699, with the speech made from the throne to the parliament of Ireland in the year 1698, with the addresses of both houses in England, and with the prohibition by this and by other Acts, formerly made in England, of exporting wool from Ireland except to that kingdom, the object of this new commercial regulation is obvious. It was to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland and in effect to prohibit the exportation from thence because it was the princ.i.p.al branch of manufacture and trade in England; to induce us to send to them our materials for that manufacture, and that we should be supplied with it by them; and to encourage, as a compensation to Ireland, the linen manufacture, which was not at that time a commercial object of any importance to England. This I take to be a part of the system of colony regulations. Whether it was reasonable or just to bring this kingdom into that system, has been already submitted from arguments drawn from the climates and productions of the different countries. The supposed compensation was no more than what Ireland had before; no further encouragement was given by England to our linen manufacture until six years after this prohibition, when at the request of the Irish House of Commons and after a representation of the ruinous state of the country, liberty was given by an English Act of Parliament[355] to export our white and brown linens into the colonies, which was allowing us to do as to one manufacture what, before the fifteenth of King Charles II., was permitted in every instance.

It would be presumption in a private man to decide on the weight of those arguments; but to select and arrange facts that lie dispersed in journals and books of Statutes in both kingdoms, and to make observations on those facts with caution and respect, can never give offence to those who inquire for the purpose of relieving a distressed nation and of promoting the general welfare. In that confidence I beg leave to place this subject in a different view, and to request that it may be considered what the commercial system of this kingdom was at the time of pa.s.sing this law of 1699, and whether it was, in this respect, reasonable or just that such a regulation should have been then made? The great object which the Lords and Commons of Great Britain have determined to investigate led to such a discussion; determined as they are to pursue effectual methods "for promoting the common strength, wealth, and commerce of both kingdoms."

What better guides can they follow than the examples of their ancestors and the means used by them for many centuries, and in the happiest times, for attaining the same great purposes.

In my opinion it would be improper, in the present state of the British Empire, to agitate disputed questions that may inflame the pa.s.sions of men. May no such questions ever arise between two affectionate sister kingdoms. It is my purpose only to state acknowledged facts, which never have been contested, and from those facts to lay before you the commercial system of Ireland before the year 1699.

For several centuries before this period Ireland was in possession of the English Common law[356] and of Magna Charta. The former secures the subject in the enjoyment of property of every kind; and by the latter _the liberties of all the ports of the kingdom are established_.

The Statutes made in England for the common and public weal are,[357] by an Irish Act of the 10th of Henry VII., made laws in Ireland; and the English Commercial Statutes, in which Ireland is expressly mentioned, will place the former state of commerce in this country in a light very different from that in which it has been generally considered in Great Britain.