furnish a striking commentary on the allegations that the Dublin Parliament was subordinate to English influence, and that the hereditary revenue was entirely beyond its control.

The collection of the Irish revenue during the whole of the eighteenth century was a public scandal. Newenham tells us that an inveterate and complicated system of fraud, collusion, and peculation always distinguished Ireland, and pervaded every department in it, and that no assembly. authorised to raise money, from the House of Commons to the Vestry, was exempt from the practice of jobbery.1 In this universal corruption, the revenue could not escape, and the cost of collecting it can only be explained by a systematised plan of spoliation. The gross produce of the revenue of Great Britain in 1778 was collected for 7 per cent.; that of Ireland was collected for £17 6s. 8d. per cent., or three shillings and sevenpence in the pound; the stamp duties of Great Britain in 1788 were collected for 3 per cent., those of Ireland cost about 18 per cent.; the land tax in England cost under 3 per cent, the hearth money in Ireland was collected at an expense of 16 per cent. The duties arising from malt and home-made spirits had long formed one of the principal branches of the Irish revenue. Sir Richard Cox, a commissioner of the revenue who died before 1776, often declared that not more than a third of the excise, which might have been collected, was collected, and that this system had prevailed for many years.3 Howard, who published his work on the Irish revenue in 1776, says that, if the revenue officers had done their duty, not one half of the Additional taxes would have been

1 View of Ireland, xxxiii., p. 226. "Even among the charitable institutions," he says, "the practice of jobbing has been conspicuous."

2 Clarendon, Revenue and Finances of Ireland, pp. 147-8.

3 Howard, Revenue of Ireland, Preface.

required, and complains that of all civilised nations Ireland had the worst executed laws. So late as 1800, it appeared in evidence before a committee appointed to inquire into the scarcity of provisions, that public stills did more illicit work than private clandestine stills, that not more than one half of the malt duties, and not one half of the spirit duties was collected. An intelligent writer in the same year estimated that, if attention were given to the collection of these duties, they might easily be increased by £200,000 a year; and that if smuggling were stopped, the nation would gain a million a year. But the waste of the revenue did not satisfy the Dublin Parliament. We shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that they themselves inaugurated a system of jobbery, merely for the purpose of dissipating the national resources.

Adam Smith was of opinion that Ireland was bound to contribute towards the discharge of the debt of Great Britain, inasmuch as it had been contracted not only for the defence of Great Britain, but of all the different provinces of the empire. Ireland did not even contribute to the support of the navy, except on one occasion, when, in the short-lived gratitude for the grant of independence in 1782, she promised a sum of £100,000 for the raising of 20,000 additional sailors. Of this sum only a half was given, and 7,000 men raised. It was not until the war of 1756 that she contributed anything to the general defence of the empire. This long and expensive war, which terminated in 1763," says Clarendon, "was the first in which Ireland was called upon for a contribution. Former

1 Newenham, View, etc., p. 284.

2 Facts and Arguments Respecting Inland Navigation. 1800, Dublin. 3 Of this sum, £53,600, odd shillings, was appropriated to raising men for the navy, and £46,399 was placed to the credit of the nation (Irish Debates, ii., p. 296. Commons' Journals, xi., p. 157). As to the number of men raised, see Irish Debates, ii., p. 93.

wars only required that Ireland should protect herself; the war of 1756 demanded supplies for protecting the empire at large." 1 When this contribution was asked, the revenue of the island was in an extraordinarily prosperous condition. In 1755, the accumulation in the Treasury was so great that the Committee of Accounts voted the amount of the surplus to be no less than £471,404.2 A marvellous surplus, when we remember that for nearly thirty years there had been no increase of taxation.

1 Revenue and Finances of Ireland, p. 106. Commercial Restrictions, p. 46.

2 Ib., p. 102.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FIRST TWO PARLIAMENTS AFTER THE REVOLUTION. THE ALLEGED SUPPRESSION OF THE IRISH WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE.

THE first Parliament in Ireland after the Revolution met on the 5th of October, 1692. It had been summoned under and in the manner required by Poynings' law. Its earliest enactment,' following a former statute,2 proclaimed "that this kingdom of Ireland is annexed and united to the Imperial Crown of England, and by the laws and statutes of this kingdom is declared to be justly and rightfully depending upon, and belonging, and for ever united to the same ". This would appear to a reasonable man to be a full and explicit acknowledgment of the subordination of Ireland. But the members of the Dublin Parliament interpreted these words in a manner peculiar to themselves. They maintained that their kingdom was dependent on the King of England alone, but they would not own the right of the Imperial Parliament to bind Ireland by its laws, and wished to exclude the English Lords and Commons from all interference with it. They had just been rescued from exile and beggary by English forces and English money; they were unable to defend themselves either against a foreign enemy, or the

14 Will. and Mary, c. 1.

228 Henry VIII., c. 6. The words of this Irish Statute are remarkable. For as much as this land of Ireland is the King's proper dominion of England, and united, knit, and belonging to the Imperial Crown of the said realm." (See also, 33 Hen. VIII., c. 1.)

Irish Roman Catholics among whom they lived; their personal safety, and everything they possessed, they owed to the protection of England; yet they claimed independence of the Legislature of that country, though they admitted their dependence on its King. They confessed that Ireland had been conquered by the sovereign of England, or, as they expressed it, that he had delivered the kingdom from the calamities of intestine war, and restored themselves to their laws and liberties, but they claimed to be dependent only on him; as if a King of England, at the head of an English army paid by English money, could conquer for himself and not for the nation of which he was the representative. Clamour cannot alter the nature of things. England had just conquered Ireland for the third time. It was hers by the law of nations. It did not lie in the mouths of her own children to dictate the manner or the terms on which she

was to hold it It was her right, and hers alone, to determine what powers of management she would entrust to an Assembly which did not represent a fourth of the inhabitants of the island. She might, with perfect justice, have given that management to any one of the three communities which dwelt in the country which she had purchased with her blood and treasures. The members of the small Episcopalian Parliament, for the Presbyterians in it were so few that they need not be mentioned, had contributed nothing to the recent conquest. At the first appearance of danger they had fled, and found a refuge in the mother country, where they had been fed upon her alms. "The only refuge we had to fly to," says the advocate of the claims of the Dublin Parliament, "was in England, where multitudes continued for many months destitute of all manner of relief but such as the charity of England afforded, which indeed was very munificent and never to be forgotten". England was perfectly

1 Molyneux, Case of Ireland, etc., p. 40, edit. 1782.