was an impossibility, viz., an extensive foreign commerce and a huge exportation, without a home consumption. They had no idea of the natural development of a nation; that it advances from a superabundant agriculture to manufactures, and from superabundant manufactures to external trade. Dazzled by the enormous commerce of Great Britain, and ignorant of economic truths, they dreamt that they could prematurely force a country especially adapted to agriculture, and which possessed no capital,' into a foremost place in the markets of the world. These views are manifested in their Parliamentary debates, and in the treatises of their commercial writers. In both, agriculture and domestic traffic are treated lightly, and the word "trade" means almost always foreign commerce, to the exclusion of the other two, which in their due order are the indispensable foundations upon which foreign intercourse and external exchange can be built. Of this way of thinking, we have already had an example in Hutchinson's worthless and misleading Commercial Restraints, in which the author complained that the woollen manufacture of Ireland had been destroyed by England, though he must have known, at the time he wrote, that there was a flourishing home manufacture which absorbed every pound of wool grown in Ireland, and which, when freedom of exportation was granted, was found to be incapable of increase.

1" The Irish are deficient in all kinds of stock, they have not sufficient for the cultivation of their lands, and are deficient in the stocks of master manufacturers, wholesale merchants, and even of retailers" (Commercial Restraints, p. 73).

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM 1753 TO 1773-THE INTENTIONAL WASTE BY THE IRISH COMMONS OF THE RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRYUNIVERSAL JOBBERY.

Two of the most recent writers, who have treated of the condition of Ireland in the eighteenth century, have made statements respecting the revenue of that country which could only have arisen from extraordinary unacquaintance with the subject. Mr. Froude tells us that the finances of Ireland were "economically managed,"1 and Mr. Lecky assures us that the Irish Parliament put "a real check upon the extravagance of the Executive ".2 A short examination will show us that these assertions are directly opposed to the truth, and that, from about the middle of the century, the Irish Parliament, for purposes of its own, deliberately set itself to squander the resources of the kingdom, and to accumulate a National Debt which need never have existed. The country gentlemen of Ireland, says Arthur Young, "have regularly in Parliament promoted all those visionary and expensive projects, set on foot by interested people, for giving premiums and bounties to the amount of an hundred thousand pounds a year, and which alone accounts for the whole of the National Debt and declining revenue, which will make many new taxes necessary.'

1 English in Ireland, Book V., c. 1. Yet, in the next chapter, he states that £150,000 a year was lost to the Government out of the customs by "various forms of peculation".

2 Vol. ii., p. 313.

3 Tour in Ireland, ii., p. 272.

was an impossibility, viz., an extensive foreign commerce and a huge exportation, without a home consumption. They had no idea of the natural development of a nation; that it advances from a superabundant agriculture to manufactures, and from superabundant manufactures to external trade. Dazzled by the enormous commerce of Great Britain, and ignorant of economic truths, they dreamt that they could prematurely force a country especially adapted to agriculture, and which possessed no capital,1 into a foremost place in the markets of the world. These views are manifested in their Parliamentary debates, and in the treatises of their commercial writers. In both, agriculture and domestic traffic are treated lightly, and the word “trade" means almost always foreign commerce, to the exclusion of the other two, which in their due order are the indispensable foundations upon which foreign intercourse and external exchange can be built. Of this way of thinking, we have already had an example in Hutchinson's worthless and misleading Commercial Restraints, in which the author complained that the woollen manufacture of Ireland had been destroyed by England, though he must have known, at the time he wrote, that there was a flourishing home manufacture which absorbed every pound of wool grown in Ireland, and which, when freedom of exportation was granted, was found to be incapable of increase.

1" The Irish are deficient in all kinds of stock, they have not sufficient for the cultivation of their lands, and are deficient in the stocks of master manufacturers, wholesale merchants, and even of retailers" (Commercial Restraints, p. 73).

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM 1753 TO 1773-THE INTENTIONAL WASTE BY THE IRISH COMMONS OF THE RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRYUNIVERSAL JOBBERY.

Two of the most recent writers, who have treated of the condition of Ireland in the eighteenth century, have made statements respecting the revenue of that country which could only have arisen from extraordinary unacquaintance with the subject. Mr. Froude tells us that the finances of Ireland were "economically managed,"1 and Mr. Lecky assures us that the Irish Parliament put "a real check upon the extravagance of the Executive ".2 A short examination will show us that these assertions are directly opposed to the truth, and that, from about the middle of the century, the Irish Parliament, for purposes of its own, deliberately set itself to squander the resources of the kingdom, and to accumulate a National Debt which need never have existed. The country gentlemen of Ireland, says Arthur Young, "have regularly in Parliament promoted all those visionary and expensive projects, set on foot by interested people, for giving premiums and bounties to the amount. of an hundred thousand pounds a year, and which alone accounts for the whole of the National Debt and declining revenue, which will make many new taxes necessary.

1 English in Ireland, Book V., c. 1. Yet, in the next chapter, he states that £150,000 a year was lost to the Government out of the customs by "various forms of peculation".

2 Vol. ii., p. 313.

3 Tour in Ireland, ii., p. 272.

was an impossibility, viz., an extensive foreign commerce and a huge exportation, without a home consumption. They had no idea of the natural development of a nation; that it advances from a superabundant agriculture to manufactures, and from superabundant manufactures to external trade. Dazzled by the enormous commerce of Great Britain, and ignorant of economic truths, they dreamt that they could prematurely force a country especially adapted to agriculture, and which possessed no capital,1 into a foremost place in the markets of the world. These views are manifested in their Parliamentary debates, and in the treatises of their commercial writers. In both, agriculture and domestic traffic are treated lightly, and the word "trade" means almost always foreign commerce, to the exclusion of the other two, which in their due order are the indispensable foundations upon which foreign intercourse and external exchange can be built. Of this way of thinking, we have already had an example in Hutchinson's worthless and misleading Commercial Restraints, in which the author complained that the woollen manufacture of Ireland had been destroyed by England, though he must have known, at the time he wrote, that there was a flourishing home manufacture which absorbed every pound of wool grown in Ireland, and which, when freedom of exportation was granted, was found to be incapable of increase.

1" The Irish are deficient in all kinds of stock, they have not sufficient for the cultivation of their lands, and are deficient in the stocks of master manufacturers, wholesale merchants, and even of retailers" (Commercial Restraints, p. 73).