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CHAPTER VI.

THE COMMERCIAL ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND IRELAND, 1782-1800.

THE commercial relations between England and Ireland in the interval between 1782 and 1800 should be clearly understood.

Ireland had, by the Acts of 1779 and 1780, obtained the freedom of foreign and colonial trade, both of export and of import.

By an Act of 1793, she had obtained liberty to re-export foreign and colonial goods from her own shores to England.*

She had, by an English Act of the same year, got the illusory privilege of having an eight-hundred-ton East Indiaman to make up a cargo for the East in her ports. But she had not free trade to the East, nor had she the admission to English ports for her goods. "The practical boon," says Mr. Butt, "that was won for the Irish nation (by the Volunteers), was the right of the Parliament of Ireland. to control our own harbours, and to regulate our own trade. Of course the trade of Ireland was subject to the interference which England could

* 33 Geo. III. (Eng.), c. 63.

"An Argument for Ireland," p. 210.

exercise by her dominion over the colonies and dependencies of the Imperial Crown. A law which would have prohibited the exportation of Irish goods either to England or France or Canada, would have been beyond the power of the English Parliament to pass, but it was perfectly competent to that Parliament to prohibit the importation of these goods into England or Canada, just in the same manner as the French Government might have prohibited their importation into France. The English Parliament was the supreme legislature for England and the colonies, and had just the same power of legislating against the importation of Irish products, as they would have had against those of Holland or of France."

Thus stood the Irish Parliament in constitutional position from 1782 until its dissolution.*

England, as we have seen, had laid prohibitory duties on Irish manufactures, whereas Ireland, bound by the chain of Poynings' Law, was unable to protect her own industries. "It was very natural," in the words of Mr. Pitt, "that Ireland, with an independent legislature, should now look for perfect equality."

In 1783 Mr. Griffiths, advocating in the Irish House, of Commons the protection of Irish manufacturers, said: "Lord North knew very well when he granted you a free trade that he gave you nothing, or, at most, a useless bauble, and when petitions were delivered against our free trade by several manufacturing towns

* "Irish Federalism," pp. 38, 39.

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in England, he assured them in circular letters that nothing effectual had or should be granted to Ireland."*

The Irish Parliament, however, on obtaining legislative independence, refrained from measures of retaliation in the hope that the commercial relations of both countries would be settled on a satisfactory basis.

Mr. Pitt, in introducing in the English House of Commons his celebrated Commercial Propositions for the regulation of trade between England and Ireland, thus speaks: "To this moment (February, 1785) no change had taken place in the intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland themselves. Some trivial points, indeed, had been changed, but no considerable changes had taken place in our manufactures exported to Ireland, or in theirs imported to England. That, therefore, which had been done was still believed by the people of Ireland to be insufficient, and clamours were excited and suggestions published in Dublin and elsewhere of putting duties on our products and manufactures under the name of protecting duties." +

Chief Justice Whiteside thus states summarily the scope of Mr. Pitt's propositions :

"It was proposed to allow the importation of the produce of all other countries through Great Britain into Ireland, or through Ireland into Great Britain, without any increase of duty on that account. It was proposed, as to any article produced or manu

*"Irish Debates," iii. 133.

+"Parliamentary Register," xvii., p. 250.

factured in Ireland or in England, where the duties were then different on importation into either country, to reduce those duties in the kingdom where they were highest down to the lower scale. And it was asked from Ireland that when the gross hereditary revenue should rise above a fixed sum, the surplus should be appropriated towards the support of the naval force of the Empire. These propositions passed through both branches of the Irish Legislature, were remitted to England, and by Pitt laid before the British House of Commons. He was immediately attacked by Fox and the Whigs, aided by Lord North, who one and all declared themselves the uncompromising enemies of free trade. And these factious men declared that in the interests of the British manufacturers they could not allow Irish fustians to be brought into England to ruin English manufacturers. The fustian they affected to fear was nothing to be compared with the fustian of their speeches. The enlightened views of the great Conservative minister were in a measure baffled by the shameful opposition of Fox, and of his friends in Parliament, and of thick-headed cotton manufacturers out of the House. The result was that Pitt was coerced to introduce exceptions and limitations. The eleven propositions grew up to twenty, the additional propositions relating to various subjects, patents, copyrights, fisheries, colonial produce, navigation laws, the enactment as to which was that whatever navigation laws were then, or should thereafter be enacted by the

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Legislature of Great Britain, should also be enacted by the Legislature of Ireland; and in favour of the old East India Company monopoly, Ireland was debarred from all trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan." "There seemed to be nothing hurtful to the pride of Ireland in the affair. But when Fox found that his great rival defeated him on the commercial part of the question, he artfully, as Lord Stanhope shows, changed his ground of attack, and availing himself of the limitations which Pitt had been compelled to introduce into his original scheme, Fox cried out that this was a breach of Ireland's newly-granted independence. 'I will not,' said Fox, with incredible hypocrisy, or with incredible folly, 'I will not barter English commerce for Irish slavery, this is not the price I would pay, nor is this the thing I would purchase.' "When the twenty propositions of Mr. Pitt were returned to the Irish Parliament, they encountered a fierce and protracted opposition. Mr. Grattan's speech has been extolled as one of his ablest-it is not intemperate. His chief objection was to the fourth resolution, by which he said, 'We are to agree to subscribe whatever laws the Parliament (of England) shall subscribe respecting navigation; we are to have no legislative power-then there is an end of your free trade and of your free Constitution.' He also curiously objected that the measure was 'an union-an incipient and a creeping union—a virtual union establishing one will in the general concerns of commerce and