CHAPTER XIX.

"Free-trade is good for Ireland.”

WHEN the corn-laws were under discussion in 1846, It was predicted that the withdrawal of protection would be (as it now clearly is) a blow yet more severe and fatal to Irish, than to English agriculture.

England had manufactures, shipping, and trade, as well as agriculture. Ireland had none of these, she had only agriculture. But then she had the supply of her own market, of the English market, and, to a great extent, of the West Indian market also, with wheat, oats, pigs, bacon, lard, and other provisions.

The time to smite effectually the only industry of Ireland was well chosen. Irish land was deprived of protection, at the very crisis when it was, for the first time and suddenly, burthened with the support of all the poor of Ireland, by far the most wretched and numerous in Europe, We were encouraged to hope that the Irish poor would, some how or other, live on imported Indian corn; that a nation, as it has been well expressed, would be fed on an exotic.

Such are the benefits which free-trade has already conferred on Ireland's agriculture!

And lest it should be said that the ill effects resulting from the sudden adoption of free-trade in agricultural produce, will disappear in a course of years, it may be as well to remember that free-trade with England, in manufactures, has existed a long time.

Let us therefore see what free-trade has done for Ireland's manufactures.

For near half a century, Ireland has had perfectly free-trade with the richest country in the world. What has that free-trade done for her?

She has now no employment for her teeming population, except upon the land. She ought to have had, and might easily have had, other and various employment, and plenty of it. Are we to believe the calumny that the Irish are lazy and won't work? Is Irish human nature different from other human nature? Are not the most laborious of all laborers in London and New York, Irishmen? Are Irishmen inferior in understanding? We Englishmen, who have personally known Irishmen in the army, at the bar, in the church, know that there is no better head than a disciplined Irish one.* But in all these cases, that master of industry, the stomach, has been well satisfied.

Let an Englishman exchange his bread, and beer, and beef, and mutton,-for no breakfast, for a luke

"The minds and bodies of the Irish people," says Sir John Davies, Attorney General to King James Ist," are endued with extraordinary abilities of nature."

warm lumper at dinner, and a stone. Va ad diet, how much is be better man at

Celt as he calls him.

No! the truth is, the misery of Id

the human nature that grows there. I a from England's perverse legislation, past and present

For a long course of years, Ireland's manufactures were systematically discouraged and stided, wille England's were, at the same time, protected and eberibed. The Colonies, and even England and Settland were protected against Irish manufactures.

"Ireland," says Dean Swift, writing in 1727, “ Ire"land is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of, "either in ancient or modern story, which was denied "the liberty of exporting their native commodities and "manufactures wherever they pleased, except to coun'tries at war with their own prince or state; yet this privilege, by the superiority of mere power, is refused to us in the most momentous parts of commerce.”

"

The masculine common sense of this great writer bewails in a hundred places the importation of English manufactures, and the consequent absence of Irish ones, as the plague and curse of Ireland.

"One cause of a country's thriving," he says, "is "the industry of the people in working up all their "native commodities to the last."-Another: "The

"conveniency of safe ports and havens to carry out

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their own goods as much manufactured, and bring in

"those of others as little manufactured * as the na"ture of mutual commerce will allow." Another : "The disposition of the people of the country to wear "their own manufactures, and import as few clothes, 'furniture, food, or drink as they possibly can live "conveniently without."

But he adds: " both sexes in Ireland, especially the women, despise and abhor to wear any of their own "manufactures, even those which are better made than "in other countries. I would be glad," says he, "to "know by what secret method it is, that we are to

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grow a rich and flourishing people. The only trade "worth mentioning, is the linen of the north, and

some butter from Cork." "If," says he, "we do "flourish, it must be against every law of nature and reason, like the thorn at Glastonbury, which blossoms in the midst of winter."

All will now at length allow, that the old English policy of preventing or destroying Irish manufacturing industry was not only monstrously cruel and unjust, but highly disadvantageous to England as well as Ireland, inflicting as it did on Ireland the curse of inveterate pauperism and mendicancy. But the mischief has been done. It cannot be undone, by merely removing restrictions on Irish industry. This will only perpetuate the evil. Trade has always a tendency to run in the same channel. English manufactures, fostered

* Dean Swift's notions were like those expounded in Chapters IV. and V.

by a jealous system of protection, and therefore now become the first in the world, permeating every Irish village, where there is a penny to spend, will effectually choke and smother any infant Irish manufactures. Misery has produced discontent, insubordination, insecurity. Now, neither Irish nor English manufacturing industry will flourish on Irish ground, without some temporary, but extraordinary inducement, as a compensation for the extraordinary and accidental disadvantages to which it would be subjected. The destruction of Irish industry by the ancient selfish English policy is not only a case for repentance, but for restitution. Like other sinners, we are very willing to confess that we have done wrong; ready even to promise that we will do so no more. But a proposal for compensation, a proposal that we should give any Irish industry, or even any English industry on Irish ground, a partial and temporary protection and advantage, so as to place Ireland, as nearly as we can, in the same state as if she had always been fairly treated, as an integral part of the empire, a proposal to make up for past delinquencies, and really restore industry to its natural channels-I say such a proposal, just and natural as it is, would, at present, be received in England with shouts of derision.

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But, at length, it will be seen that by merely leaving things alone, although you make Ireland an integral portion of the British territory, you are but perpetuating the old injustice. She will certainly not make

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