IRISH HISTORY
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CHAPTER 11
THE
SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE
The
systematic ruthlessness, with which England wiped out Ireland’s trade and
industries, has, like the Irish Penal Laws, no parallel in the history of any
other subject land. Swift said: ‘Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or
read of either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of
exporting its native manufactures and commodities wherever it pleased’. Here
is a brief summary of this bizarre story. In
the early centuries of the Christian Era there is much evidence that the highly
civilised Celts were greatly inclined to trade and commerce — probably
stimulated in that direction by the Phoenicians who carried on a large
commercial trade with Ireland. The
early Irish were renowned for their excellence in the arts and crafts —
particularly for their amazing work in metals, bronze, silver and gold. A
thousand bogs and hills in Ireland constantly yield up testimony to this —
even if we were to discard the testimony of written history, folklore, story and
poem. Of Irish gold-wrought objects alone, there are in the National Museum in
Dublin, twelve times the weight of all the ancient gold objects combined from
England, Scotland and Wales, collected in the British Museum. All this
notwithstanding the myriad works of art that were pilfered first by the Danes
and then by the Norman-English and finally by the British. Of
the very ancient pre-Christian gorgets wrought in gold, Dr Joyce says: ‘They
are so astonishingly fine, and show such extraordinary skill of manipulation,
that it is difficult to understand how they could have been produced by mere
handwork, by moulds, hammers and punches. Yet they must have been done in that
way’. Sir William Wilde said of them: ‘It may safely be asserted that for
both design and execution, they are undoubtedly the most gorgeous and
magnificent specimens of gold work discovered in any part of the world’. At
the beginning of the 14th century, the trade of Ireland with the
Continent of Europe was important — and trading ships were constantly sailing
between Ireland and the leading ports of the Continent. Irish merchants were
known in the great Continental markets and Irish money commanded the highest
respect. This
condition of things naturally did not suit commercial England. So she commenced
a long campaign to stifle Irish industry and trade. In
1366 England appointed an Admiral whose duty was to stop traffic between Ireland
and the Continent. He must have been only apathetically successful; for a little
more than a century later, Edward IV deplores the prosperity of Irish trade, and
he orders (in 1465) that since fishing vessels from the Continent helped the
Continental traffic with Ireland, these vessels should not henceforth fish in
Irish waters without an English permit. Since
even this failed to stop the recalcitrant Irish, in 1494 an English law was
enacted preventing the Irish from exporting any industrial product, except with
an English permit, and through an English port, after paying English fees. This
impediment failed too. For in 1548, we find English merchants unofficially
taking a hand in trying to end the traffic — by fitting out armed vessels to
attack and plunder the trading ships between Ireland and the Continent —
commercialised piracy. Eventually,
official piracy had to be resorted to. Twenty years after, Elizabeth ordered the
seizure of the whole Continental commerce of Munster — much more than half of
the trade of the Island — and a fleet under Admiral Winter was dispatched to
do the chore. In 1571 she further ordered that no cloth or stuff made in Ireland
should be exported even to England, except by Englishmen in Ireland, or by
merchants approved by the government. (Nearly thirty years before, her much
married father, Henry, had forbidden Irish cloth to be exported from Galway.) Irish
trade was attacked from yet another angle. At the same time that the pirate
admiral was appointed by Edward III, Irish coinage was forbidden to be received
in England. However, Irish merchants and Irish money had such worthy status that
not only did they still succeed with it on the Continent, but, one hundred years
later, Irish coinage had to be forbidden again in England. In
1477, after imprisoning some Irish merchants who traded with Irish money in
Bristol, the English Government adopted a radical reform by introducing into
Ireland an English coinage debased twenty-five per cent below the English
measure, and compelled Ireland to accept it as her legal currency. This
accomplished two good objectives. English merchants bought in Ireland by the
cheap standard and sold these purchases abroad by the dear standard. Also
England was enabled to pay her army in Ireland with cheap Irish coin. And when
Ireland’s merchants refused to honour at its face value the debased coinage
tendered by the soldiers, an act was passed (in 1547) making such refusal an act
of treason. By
reason of their big Continental trade the shipping industry had in itself become
an important one to Irishmen. Consequently it was advisable to extinguish it.
The Navigation Act of 1637 provided that all Irish ships must clear from English
ports when engaged in foreign trade. But as this did not sufficiently discourage
the Irish the Act was amended in 1663, to prohibit the use of all foreign-going
ships, except those built in England, mastered and three-fourths manned by
English, and cleared from English ports. Their return cargoes, too, had to be
discharged in England. In this manner Ireland’s ship building industry was
destroyed, and her Continental trade was practically wiped out. (‘The
conveniency of ports and harbours with which nature had blessed Ireland was of
no more use than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a
dungeon.’—Swift.) Yet,
Ireland, ever persevering, began, even under such heavy constraint, to develop a
lucrative trade with the colonies. This fixation of the Irish with trade was
nearly cured in 1670 (by Charles II), when Ireland was forbidden to export to
the colonies anything except horses, servants, and victuals! Then
Ireland fell back upon the little profit to be derived from imports from the
colonies. England, observing this, put a bush in the gap, decreeing that no
colonial products should be landed in Ireland — till they had first been
landed in England and paid all English rates and duties. ‘Thus’, says
Newenham, ‘was Ireland deprived of the direct lucrative trade of the whole
western world’. But
England must get some credit for contrition. Ireland was permitted to import
directly from the Plantations all goods, of the growth, production or
manufacture of the said Plantations, except sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton,
wool, molasses, ginger, pitch, turpentine, tar, rice, and nine or ten other
specified items — which, stripped of its facetious verbiage, just means that
Ireland was permitted to import West Indian rum. This aided the planters and rum
makers of the West Indies, at the expense of Irish farmers, distillers, and
their collective constitutions. The
foregoing will seem to many readers a good English joke. But with constant
reiteration through the centuries these English jokes lost much of their humour.
The woolen joke, in particular, held little mirth for the Irish. At
a very early period, Ireland had been forbidden to export her cattle to England.
When forbidden to export sheep as well the Irish next experimented with woolen
manufactures. This quickly became a great Irish industry. In the Continental
markets, and even in the British, Irish woolens were in brisk demand.
Consequently England resolved that this trade must be stopped. Though, as usual,
it took a long time to convince the pig-headed people who inhabited Ireland that
it was for their benefit to stop it. The
Irish woolen manufacturers began, at an early period, to rival England’s. So,
in 1517 Elizabeth imposed such heavy restrictions on the Irish woolen trade that
in a short time it crippled the large Irish trade with the Netherlands and other
parts of the Continent. Yet half a century later, Lord Strafford, then Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, pleaded for a little more constraint. In 1634, he wrote
to Charles I, ‘That all wisdom advises to keep this (Irish) kingdom as much
subordinate and dependent on England as possible; and, holding them from the
manufacture of wool (which unless otherwise directed, I shall by all means
discourage), and then enforcing them to fetch their cloth from England, how can
they depart from us without nakedness and beggary?’ How indeed? However,
it was not until 1660 that the radical step of forbidding by law the export of
woolens from Ireland to England was taken. When this blow fell, the Irish
resorted to export of their raw wool. This was stopped by Charles II, with Acts
prohibiting Ireland from exporting sheep-wool, wool-fells, shortlings, yarn made
of wool and wool-flocks. The Acts were thorough. In
1673, Sir William Temple advised that the Irish would act wisely in giving up
altogether the manufacture of wool (even for home use), because ‘it tended to
interfere prejudicially with the English woolen trade!’ Now
Ireland was almost completely cured of its ridiculous addiction to exporting
both woolens and wool — almost. But a trace of the habit still lingered. While
the British colonies, most likely by oversight, had been left open to her, she
continued exporting to them. This needed attention. So, in 1697 an Act was
instituted to prohibit Ireland from sending any of her woolen manufactures to
any place, whatsoever! Why they had not thought of such simple legislation
earlier is something of a mystery. But
it was very soon found that even this Act was deficient. It — unthinkingly —
still left the Irish market open to the Irish wool manufacturers. This Irish
market had to be, of course, the private property of the English manufacturers.
The mistake was soon remedied, and on 9 June 1698, both English Houses of
Parliament addressed King William beseeching him to scold his Irish subjects for
— in the language of the Lords — ‘The growth of the woolen manufactures
there had long been, and ever will be, looked upon with great jealousy by all
your subjects of this kingdom, and if not timely remedied may occasion very
strict laws totally to prohibit and suppress same’. The tone of the address
indicates that the imminent punishment for continued obstinacy by the naughty
Irish child was going to give the noble Lords more pain than it would the child,
which was after all only being punished for its own good. In
the course of their address in the Commons the Lords said: ‘And therefore we
cannot without trouble observe that Ireland, which is dependant on, and
protected by, England, in the enjoyment of all they have, should of late apply
itself to the woolen manufacture, to the great prejudice of this kingdom ...
make it your royal care, and enjoin all those whom you employ in Ireland to make
it their care, and to use their utmost diligence, for discouraging the woolen
manufacture in Ireland’. And in token of their solicitude for the country that
was ‘dependent on, and protected by England in the enjoyment of all they
have’, it was suggested that Irishmen should turn from woolens to hemp and
linen — which England had no means of making — and which, more
significantly, Ireland had less means of making. King
William answered his faithful Lords; ‘I shall do all that in my power lies to
discourage the manufacture of woolens in Ireland’. And the King was this time
as good as his word. In 1698 he signed an Act to the effect that because these
manufactures are daily increasing in Ireland (disastrous to relate!), the export
of wool and woolen manufactured articles were forbidden under pain of forfeiture
of the goods and ships that carried them, and five hundred pounds fine! Except
for a few little items such as coverlids and waddings that were overlooked in
the act of William III — but carefully attended to by his successors — the
great Irish woolen manufacture was extinguished forever. But to make doubly
sure, (by 5 Geo. 11) three ships of war and eight or more armed vessels were
appointed to cruise off the coast of Ireland with orders to seize all vessels
venturing to carry woolens from Ireland. ‘So ended,’ says Lecky, ‘the
fairest promise that Ireland had ever known of becoming a prosperous and happy
country. The ruin was absolute and final.’ For
a long time after this destruction of one of the country’s chief supports, the
economic conditions in Ireland were fearful. Swift, who stated that ‘since
Scripture says oppression makes a wise man mad, therefore, consequently
speaking, the reason some men in Ireland are not mad is because they are not
wise’ — described the predicament the country was now in — ‘The old and
sick are dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin. The younger
labourers cannot get work, and pine away for want of nourishment to such a
degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to commence labour, they
have not the strength to perform it’. When
William took from Ireland its woolen manufactures, he promised to compensate the
country by encouraging the manufacture of hemp and linen. And his Lords Justice
in their address to the Irish Houses of Parliament, on 27 September 1698, after
requesting the country to commit falo de se by resigning the woolen manufacture,
said: Amongst these bills there is one for the encouragement of the linen and
hemp manufactures which we recommend to you. The settlement of those
manufactures will contribute much to the people of this country, and will be
found much more advantageous to this kingdom than the woolen manufacture, which,
being the stable trade of England, from which all foreign markets are supplied,
can never be encouraged here for that purpose: whereas, the linen and hempen
manufactures will not only be encouraged as consistent with the trade of
England, but will render the trade of this kingdom both useful and necessary to
England. Now
to see how the promises of William and his Lords Justice were kept. First, the
Irish linen manufacture. In
1705 it was enacted that only the coarsest kinds of undyed Irish linen should be
admitted to the British Colonies. Checked, striped and dyed Irish linens were
excluded. Besides, no colonial goods could be bought in return. Irish linens of
every kind were forbidden to be exported to all other countries with the
exception of Britain. There, a thirty per cent duty met it with a snigger and
turned it home again. To help it on its way, to the British linen manufacturers
a bounty was granted on all linen exports! But
English thoughtfulness followed and sought out the Irish linen trade even within
Ireland. When Crummelin, the Huguenot, who helped to build up the linen trade in
Ulster, tried to bring the manufacture into Leinster, the fiercest English
opposition blazed up. Edmund
Burke admonishment the English Government for its gross breach of faith. And the
poor, servile, Anglo-Irish Parliament in 1774, addressing the Lord Lieutenant
Harwood on the subject of the linen ruin, said: ‘The result is the ruin of
Ulster and the flight of the Protestant population to America’. So, it was the
ruin of the linen trade by England who ‘protected them in the enjoyment of all
they have’ which helped to give America her so-called Scots-Irish population. Next
the promised help in the hempen manufacture. Although no Act came to their aid,
the Irish went ahead with the hemp as well as with the linen, and soon developed
a considerable trade in the export of sailcloth to Britain. Then the aid came,
in the form of the long promised Act. By 23 Geo.11, c.33, a heavy import duty
was placed upon sailcloth shipped to Britain. As was customary, to pursue the
lion to its lair, very soon after, British manufacturers were granted a bonus on
sailcloth exported from Britain to Ireland! The
British had given to the Irish the linen and hempen manufactures to play with,
while they were carrying off their woolen trade. When the woolen industry was
safely stolen from them, they were tactfully requested to hand over the linen
and hempen manufactures also. Ireland,
resolutely, tried its hand at manufacturing cotton. England met this move with a
twenty-five per cent duty upon Irish cotton imported into England. Next, in the
reign of George I, the inhabitants of Great Britain were forbidden to wear any
cotton other than of British manufacture. So the cotton comedy was concluded
before it begun. From
an early period the Irish had a large trade in the export of cattle to England.
This was prohibited. But when England felt the need for Irish cattle, they were
admitted once more. In 1660, the Irish sent over to England a donation of 15,000
bullocks, to relieve the distress which occurred in London after the Great Fire.
In return for their charity the Irish were accused of attempting to recommence
the cattle trade with England. An Act was passed in which the importation of
Irish cattle was forbidden, and termed a ‘nuisance’. The Duke of Buckingham,
whose farming interests were in England declared that none could oppose the
Bill, ‘except such as had Irish understandings’. Lord Ossory, who had Irish
interests, opposed the Bill and the term ‘nuisance’. Several noble lords
attempted to draw their swords. Ossory challenged Buckingham and Buckingham
declined. Ossory was sent to the Tower; the word ‘nuisance’ remained. Some
even said that the word should have been ‘felony’. The Irish commerce in
cattle was crushed. The
imaginative Irish then began killing their cattle and exporting the dead meat to
England. Their equally resourceful protectors countered their diligence with a
law declaring that the importation of cattle, sheep, swine and beef from Ireland
was henceforth a common nuisance, and forbidden. To leave no hole without a peg
— they added pork and bacon for good measure. The
contrary Irish discovered a hole to get through. They developed dairying, and
began exporting butter and cheese. Their exasperated protectors had to go to the
trouble of amending the prohibition laws — adding butter and cheese to the
items which the Irish were invited to keep at home. When
their dead cattle, their live cattle and all the products of cattle were shut
out from Britain the Irish fell back upon curing the killed meat, and exporting
it to the Continent. They soon developed a highly profitable trade in this line.
‘And’, says Newenham, ‘Ireland became the principal country from which
butchers’ meat was exported’. At the behest of the English contractors, the
English Parliament began laying embargo on the exportation of Irish supplies, on
pretence of preventing the enemies of Britain from being supplied. So the trade
in salted provisions was no more. The Irish were granted one favour, however,
they were graciously permitted to send contributions of salted beef to the
distressed Londoners The
Irish next used their cattle and horses for their hides, and began what was soon
a prosperous trade in leather — which was in demand not only in England but
all over Europe. Their ever-vigilant English masters soon came along with
another prohibition Bill, which put an end to that business. Before quitting the
cattle drive, however, it is only fair to say that one of England’s most
representative commercial writers of the early 18th century, Davenant,
pleaded that England should permit Ireland to resume the cattle trade —
because it would hold the Irish from becoming manufacturers! In
the middle of the 18th century Ireland, developing an important silk
weaving industry, began to disturb the dreams of English silk weavers. So
Britain, which imposed a heavy duty on Irish silk imported into England,
politely requested the Irish Parliament to admit English manufactured silk into
Ireland duty-free. What is more contemptible, the Anglo-Irish Parliament
complied. Within the next generation the number of silk looms at work in Ireland
was reduced from eight hundred to twenty. ‘And’ says Newenham, ‘three
thousand persons were thereby driven to beggary or emigration’. Ireland
attempted to develop a tobacco industry. But a law against its growth was passed
in the fifth year of the reign of Charles II. Again, in 1831, under William IV,
it is said that any person found in possession of Irish grown tobacco should
suffer a heavy penalty. The tobacco trade was smoked out of existence. The
Irish brewing industry began to expand. It soon contracted after legislation was
introduced compelling the Irish brewers to import their ingredients from England
alone. In
the latter part of the 18th century Ireland began not only making her
own glass, but also making glass for export; Irish glass was gaining a name.
Then (by 4 Geo.II, c.15) the Irish were forbidden to export glass to any country
whatsoever under penalty of forfeiting ship, cargo, and ten shillings per pound
weight of cargo. It was forbidden also to import any glass other than that of
English manufacture. Four
and five centuries ago and upward, the Irish fisheries were the second in
importance in Europe. Under careful English nursing they were, a century and a
half ago, brought to the vanishing point. Then the independent Irish Parliament
at the end of the 18th century saved them. It subsidised and revived
the Irish fisheries — till they were rivalling the British. A few years after
the Union (1801), in 1819, England withdrew the subsidy from the Irish fisheries
— at the same time confirming and augmenting the subsidies and grants to the
British fishermen — with the result that, notwithstanding Ireland’s
possession of the longest coastline of almost any European country, it was in
possession of the most pitiable fisheries. That fish were plentiful off the
Irish coast is in no doubt. In the sixteenth century the Irish trade in wines
with France and Spain was considerable. Fish was the commodity exchange for this
luxury. The Sovereignty of the British
Seas: London, 1651, states that Philip II of Spain paid £1,000 yearly — a
huge sum for that period — to obtain the privilege of having his subjects fish
the north coast of Ireland. Stafford, referring to the capture of Dunboy Castle,
says that O’Sullivan made £500 a-year by the duties which were paid to him by
foreign fishermen, ‘although the duties they paid were very little’. Where
150,000 Irish fishermen in 27,000 Irish boats worked and thrived at the time
that the Irish Parliament took over the subsidy in 1819, one hundred years later
only a handful of people got a wretched support from Irish fisheries. The
British fisheries, four centuries ago, about equalled the Irish. The fisheries
of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century were valued at nine million pounds
annually the Irish fisheries at around three hundred thousand pounds. The Irish
fish were, with typical British concern, protected — into the British net. Here
have been set down only the principal Acts and devices for the suppression of
Irish manufactures and Irish industries, but yet sufficient to show how England
protected her beloved subjects in the enjoyment of all they had; how Ireland
prospered under English rule in a material way; and how England, in her own
step-motherly way, gently took each toddling Irish industry by the hand, led its
childish footsteps to the brink of the bottomless pit, and gave it a push, so
ending its troubles forever. This
explains in part why Ireland, one of the most favoured by nature, and one of the
most fertile countries in Europe, was reduced to one of the poorest. Statistics
showed that ninety-eight per cent of the exports of Britain, Scotland and
Ireland were in the hands of Britain, and in Ireland’s two per cent. The
Industrial Revolution passed over Ireland like a white cloud on a fine day. It
left no trace. Even
the bitter anti-Irish Froude, in his English
in Ireland, is obliged to confess, ‘England governed Ireland for what she
deemed her own interests, making her calculations on the gross balance of her
trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations aside, as if right and wrong
had been blotted out of the statute book of the Universe’. Lecky
says, ‘It would be difficult in the whole range of history, to find another
instance in which various and powerful agencies agreed to degrade the character,
and blast the prosperity of a nation’. And
from Carew: I never, nor no other man that I ever communed with, but saith that
for all things it is the goodliest land they have ever seen, not only for
pleasure and pastime of a prince, but as well for profit to his grace and to the
whole realm of England’. The final clause is the kernel of the matter. And
so the burgeoning wool trade as well as the linen and flax trade was destroyed.
All manufactured items whatsoever, that might be exported to the English market,
or indeed to any market, even the domestic market, were thwarted. The trade in
cattle and other livestock was discouraged and deterred, as well as dairying and
other by-products. So too were meat and meat products eliminated from the export
market. That, combined with the veiling of the country from the Industrial
Revolution should leave little wonderment as to why the country was left in a
state of such destitution that it was to take many years for the economy to
recover, after the British departed, and later imposed heavy punitive tariffs on
Irish produce entering Britain. That
is the end of what may be considered, by those who know not England’s way with
Ireland, an amazing chapter — but quite unremarkable to those who have a even
a bowing acquaintance with Irish history. |
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