Lord Rockingham, speaking in the English House of Lords on the 11th of May, 1779, "reminded their lordships of the compact made between both kingdoms in King William's time, when the Parliament of Ireland consented to prohibit the export of their own woollen manufacture, in order to give that of England a preference, by laying a duty equal to a full prohibition on every species of woollens, or even of the raw commodity, and of the solemn assurances given by both Houses of the British Parliament that they would give every possible encouragement, and abstain from every measure which could prevent the linen manufacture to be rendered the staple of Ireland. But how had England kept its word? By laying duties or granting bounties to the linens of British manufacture equal to a prohibition of the Irish, and at the same time giving every kind of private and public encouragement to render Scotland a real rival to Ireland in almost every species of her linen fabrics."[52] "Ireland," says Lord North when Prime Minister of England, in the speech from which I have previously quoted, "gave up her woollen trade by compact. The compact was an exclusive linen trade, rather a fair competition with England. Ireland, of her own accord, gave up the woollen trade by an Act of her own Legislature, which, when it expired, was made perpetual by an Act of the British Parliament. But this compact was no sooner made than it was violated by England, for, instead of prohibiting foreign linens, duties were laid on and necessarily collected, so far from amounting to a prohibition on the import of the Dutch, German, and East Country linen manufactures, that those manufactures have been able, after having the duties imposed on them by the British Parliament, to meet, and in some instances to undersell, Ireland both in Great Britain and the West Indies, and several other parts of the British Empire."[53] Writing in 1778 to the opponents of some trifling relaxation of the commercial restraints of Ireland, Edmund Burke asks: "Do they forget that the whole woollen manufacture of Ireland, the most extensive and profitable of any, and the natural staple of that kingdom, has been in a manner so destroyed by restrictive laws of _their own_, that in a few years it is probable they (the Irish) will not be able to wear a coat of their own fabric? Is this equality? Do gentlemen forget that the understood faith upon which they were persuaded to such an unnatural act has not been kept, and that a linen manufacture has been set up and highly encouraged against them?"[54]