BOOK 1716 sudden demand. The disgrace of allowing a nation of human beings to subsist under such conditions, forced itself at last on the conscience of the Irish Parliament, and though composed of landowners who were tempted as much as others to let their farms on the terms most profitable to them, the House of Commons in 1716, resolved unanimously to make an effort for a general change of system, and to reclaim both people and country by bringing back and stimulating agriculture. They passed a vote that covenants which prohibited the breaking soil with the plough were impolitic, and should have no binding force. They passed heads of a bill, which they recommended with the utmost earnestness to the consideration of the English Council, enjoining that for every hundred acres which any tenant held, he should break up and cultivate five; and, as a further encouragement, that a trifling bounty should be granted by the Government on corn grown for exportation. And what did England answer?-England which was so wisely anxious for the prosperity of the Protestant interest in Ireland?-England which was struggling so pathetically to make the Irish Peers and gentlemen understand the things that belonged to their peace. The bounty system might, or might not, have been well calculated to produce the effect which Ireland desired. It was the system, however, which England herself practised with every industry which she wished to encourage; and it was not on economic grounds that the Privy Council rejected a bill which they ought rather to have thrust of their own accord on Irish acceptance. The real motive was probably the same which had led to the suppres sion of the manufactures; the detestable opinion that, CHAP. III. 1716 BOOK 1716 sudden demand. The disgrace of allowing a nation of human beings to subsist under such conditions, forced itself at last on the conscience of the Irish Parliament, and though composed of landowners who were tempted as much as others to let their farms on the terms most profitable to them, the House of Commons in 1716, resolved unanimously to make an effort for a general change of system, and to reclaim both people and country by bringing back and stimulating agriculture. They passed a vote that covenants which prohibited the breaking soil with the plough were impolitic, and should have no binding force. They passed heads of a bill, which they recommended with the utmost earnestness to the consideration of the English Council, enjoining that for every hundred acres which any tenant held, he should break up and cultivate five; and, as a further encouragement. that a trifling bounty should be granted by the Government on corn grown for exportation. And what did England answer?-England which was so wisely anxious for the prosperity of the Protestant interest in Ireland?-England which was struggling so pathetically to make the Irish Peers and gentlemen understand the things that belonged to their peace. The bounty system might, or might not, have been well calculated to produce the effect which Ireland desired. It was the system, however, which England herself practised with every industry which she wished to encourage; and it was not on economic grounds that the Privy Council rejected a bill which they ought rather to have thrust of their own accord on Irish acceptance. The real motive was probably the same which had led to the suppres sion of the manufactures; the detestable opinion that, to govern Ireland conveniently, Ireland must be kept weak. Although the corn consumed in Ireland had been for many years imported, the English farmers were haunted with a terror of being undersold in their own and foreign markets, by a country where labour was cheap. A motive so iniquitous could not be confessed-but the objections which the Council was not ashamed to allege were scarcely less disgraceful to them. The English manufacturers having secured, as they supposed, the monopoly of Irish wool on their own terms, conceived that the whole soil of Ireland ought to be devoted to growing it. The merchants of Tiverton and Bideford had recently memorialised the Crown on the diminution of the number of fleeces which reached them from the Irish ports. They attributed the falling-off to the contraband trade between Ireland and France, which shortened their supplies, enhanced the price, and gave the French weavers an advantage over them.1 Their conjecture, as will be hereafter shown, was perfectly just. The contraband trade, as had been foreseen, when the restrictions were imposed, had become enormous. But the Commissioners of the Irish Revenue were unwilling to confess to carelessness. They pretended that the Irish farmers, forgetting their obligations to England, and thinking wickedly only of their own interests, were diminishing their stock of sheep, breaking up the soil, and growing wheat and barley." The allegation un 1 'Petitions from Tiverton and Bideford, November 16 and December 30, 1714.' MSS. Record Office. 2 Reply of the Commissioners of the Revenue, February, 1715.' Ibid. III. 1716 IL 1716 BOOK happily was utterly untrue. But the mere rumour of a rise of industry in Ireland, created a panic in the commercial circles of England; although the change existed as yet only in desire, and the sheepfarming, with its attending miseries, was increasing rather than diminishing. Stanhope, Walpole, Sunderland, and the other advisers of the English Crown, met the overtures of the Irish Parliament in a spirit of settled hostility, and with an infatuation which now appears like insanity, determined to keep closed the one remaining avenue by which Ireland could have recovered a gleam of prosperity. The heads of the bill were carried in Ireland without a serious suspicion that it would be received unfavourably. A few scornful members dared to say, that England would consent to nothing which would really benefit Ireland, but they were indignantly silenced by the friends of the Government. It was sent over by the Duke of Grafton, with the fullest expectation that it would be returned. He learnt first, with great suspicion, that the Tillage Bill was meeting with difficulties.' It was a measure,' he said, 'which the gentlemen of the country had very much at heart, as the only way left them to improve their estates, while they were under such hard restrictions in point of trade." 'It would be unkind,' he urged in a second more pressing letter, 'to refuse Ireland anything not unreasonable in itself.' He conceived the Corn Bill was not of that nature, and therefore earnestly requested his majesty would be pleased to indulge them in it.'" 1 'The Lords Justices to Lord Stanhope, January 22, 1716.' MSS. Record Office. 2 The Lords Justices to Lord Stanhope, January 30.'-Ibid. |