UNIV. OF

PEACE AND Plenty.

ΙΟΙ

Lord Plunket, in his speech in 1799, in one of his happiest efforts of oratory, speaks of her as of ‘a little island, with a population of four or five millions of people, hardy, gallant, and enthusiastic, possessed of all the means of civilisation, agriculture, and commerce well pursued and understood, a Constitution fully recognised and established, her revenues, her trade, her manufactures thriving beyond her hope, or the example of any other country of her extent, within these few years advancing with a rapidity astonishing even to herself, not complaining of deficiency in these respects, but enjoying and acknowledging her prosperity.'

"Gentlemen of the Jury, I will now direct your attention to such documents as will tend to corroborate the facts contained in those I have already adverted to. You have heard that in 1810 a meeting was held in Dublin to petition the Legislature for a Repeal of the Union. I will read an unconnected passage from a speech delivered by a gentleman belonging to a most respectable house in this city.* It is as follows:'Some of us remember this country before we recovered and brought back our Constitution in the year 1782. We are reminded of it by the present period. Then as now our merchants were without trade, our shopkeepers without customers, our workmen without employment; then as now it became the universal feeling that nothing but the recovery of

A Mr. Hutton, the head of a great carriage manufactory in Dublin.

our rights could save us. Our rights were recovered, and how soon afterwards, as if by magic, plenty smiled on us, and we soon became prosperous and happy.' Let me next adduce the testimony of a class of citizens who, from their position and the nature of their avocations, were well calculated to supply important evidence on the state of Ireland subsequent to the glorious achievements of 1782. The bankers of Dublin held a meeting on the 18th of December, 1798, at which they passed the following resolutions : -'Resolved, that since the renunciation of the power of Great Britain in 1782 to legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this kingdom have eminently increased.' 'Resolved, that we attribute these blessings, under Providence, to the wisdom of the Irish Parliament.' The Guild of Merchants met on the 14th January, 1799, and passed a resolution declaringThat the commerce of Ireland has increased, and her manufactures improved beyond example, since the independence of this kingdom was restored by the exertions of our countrymen in 1782. Resolved, that we look with abhorrence on any attempt to deprive the people of Ireland of their Parliament, and thereby of their constitutional right and immediate power to legislate for themselves.' I have given abundance of proofs, from extracts I have read, of the prosperity of Ireland under the fostering care of her own Parliament. A Parliamentary document shows that, from 1785 to the period of the Union, the ncrease in the consumption of teas in Ireland was

THE RESULTS OF INDEPENDENCE.

103

84 per cent., while it was only 45 per cent. in England. The increase of tobacco in Ireland was 100 per cent., in England 64; in wine, in Ireland 74 per cent., in England 52; in sugar, 57 per cent. in Ireland, and in England 53; in coffee, in Ireland 600 per cent., in England 75. You have this proof of the growing prosperity of Ireland from the most incontestable. evidence. No country ever so rapidly improved as Ireland did in that period."*

* "R. v. O'Connell,” pp. 623—626. This part of Mr. O'Connell's speech is simply an echo of the speech he delivered in 1843 during the discussion in the Dublin Corporation on Repeal of the Union, in which he relied on the same documentary evidence of Ireland's material prosperity between 1782 and 1800. These proofs could easily be multiplied. Thus Mr. Jebb, afterwards a Justice of the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, published a pamphlet in 1798, in which he says: "In the course of fifteen years our commerce, our agriculture, and our manufactures have swelled to an amount that the most sanguine friends of Ireland could not have dared to prognosticate."

104

CHAPTER VII.

THE COMMERCIAL ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND IRELAND EFFECTED BY THE ACT OF LEGISLATIVE UNION.

THE commercial arrangements effected between England and Ireland at the time of the Union are embodied in the sixth article of the Act of Union. This article provides that in respect of trade and navigation the subjects of Great Britain and Ireland are to be on the same footing from the 1st of January, 1801; that there are to be no duties or bounties on the exportation of produce of one country to the other; that all articles (except certain specified articles scheduled, which were to be subject to certain countervailing duties) the produce of either country are to be imported free from duty; that articles enumerated in Schedule II. are to be subject for twenty years to the duties therein mentioned; that the woollen manufacturers are to pay on importation into each country from the other the duties now payable on importation into Ireland; that the duties on salt, hops, and wools are not to exceed the duties that were then paid on importation into Ireland; that the duties on calicoes. and muslins are to be liable to the duties then payable on these commodities on importation from Great Britain to Ireland till the 5th of January, 1808; that

THE SIXTH Article of UNION.

105

after that date these duties are to be reduced to 10 per cent. till January 5th, 1821, and then to cease altogether; that duties on cotton-yarn and cottontwist are to be liable to the duties then payable on these commodities* till January 5th, 1808; that these duties are to be reduced annually from that date, and on the 5th of January, 1816, to cease altogether; that the produce of either country, subject to internal duty, is, on importation into each country, to be subject to countervailing duty; that the produce of either country exported through the other is to be subject to the same charges as if it had been exported directly from the country producing it; that duties charged on the import of foreign or colonial produce into either country are, on their export to the other, to be drawn back so long as the expenditure of the United Kingdom shall be defrayed by proportional contributions, but that this provision is not to extend to duties on corn.

The Speaker of the Irish Commons-the Right Hon. John Foster (afterwards Lord Oriel)—was the chief among several able opponents of these regulations. In 1799 and in 1800 he made powerful speeches in opposition, and went largely into the subject of the commercial relations of the two countries, and exposed their past and future inequalities and injustices towards Irish interests. His objections to the 6th Article of Union were, briefly, as follows:

* On importation from Great Britain to Ireland.