Irish cotton manufactures imported to England were subject to an import duty of twenty-five per cent., while a statute of Geo. I. enacted penalties on the wearing of such manufactures in Great Britain unless they were made there. The raw material for silk came to Ireland through England. The original import duty in England was 12d. in the pound, of which 3d. in the pound was retained there.[58] Irish beer and malt, too, were excluded from England, whereas English beer and malt were imported into Ireland at a nominal duty. "Hats, gunpowder, coals, bar-iron, iron-ware, and several other matters, some of which Ireland had not to export, and others of which she had very little, were at different times the objects of English restrictions, whenever it was fancied that English interests were at all threatened by them."[59] It was this legislation that caused Edmund Burke to ask, "Is Ireland united to the Crown of Great Britain for no other purpose than that we should counteract the bounty of Providence in her favour, and in proportion as that bounty has been liberal that we are to regard it as an evil which is to be met with in every sort of corrective?"[60] "England," says Mr. Froude, "governed Ireland for what she deemed her own interest, making her calculation on the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations to accumulate, as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute book of the universe."[61] "One by one of each of our nascent industries," observes Lord Dufferin, "was either strangled in its birth, or handed over gagged and bound to the jealous custody of the rival interest of England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude." This sketch of English legislation for Irish trade would leave the impression that the Parliaments of Great Britain were as lavish in their efforts to suppress industrial enterprise in that country as any British trader could reasonably desire. It will surprise us to find that this atrocious code was not regarded as sufficiently thorough. "In the year 1698," says Hely Hutchinson, "two petitions were preferred from Folkestone and Aldborough, stating a singular grievance that they suffered from Ireland 'by the Irish catching herrings at _Waterford and Wexford_, and sending them to the Streights, and thereby _forestalling_ and ruining petitioners' markets;' but these petitioners had the _hard lot_ of having motions in their favour rejected."[62] FOOTNOTES: