"If people felt impatient with the Irish," said Mr. Fawcett, addressing a political meeting at Shoreditch on November 2nd, 1881, "they should remember that the Irish were, to a great extent, what England had made them. If there were some Irishmen now displaying bitter hostility to England, it should be remembered that for a long time Ireland had been treated as if she had been a hostile or a foreign country. A mass of vexatious restrictions were imposed on her industry, and it was thought that if any branch of Irish trade interfered with English profits, that branch of Irish trade was immediately to be discouraged. For a long time, for instance, to please the agricultural interests of this country, the importation of live cattle from Ireland was absolutely prohibited." These statements of leading public men are strong evidence of the far-reaching effects upon Ireland of a system which Mr. John Morley, writing on a literary topic, has not hesitated to designate as "the atrocious fiscal policy of Great Britain,"[7] and for which Earl Cowper, speaking at Belfast as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, could find no gentler adjectives than "unjust and iniquitous."[8] In the following pages I propose to exhibit summarily the material injuries inflicted upon Ireland by the commercial or anti-commercial arrangements of Great Britain. With this view, I will endeavour to sketch in outline the political relations of Ireland to Great Britain which rendered such arrangements possible (Chap. I.); the principal laws made by the English Parliament in restraint of Irish trade stating them in a plain and popular manner (Chap. II.); the opposition of the English Government to the efforts of the Irish Parliament to promote Irish trade (Chap. III.); the immediate effects of English legislation on Irish trade (Chap. IV.); the Irish Volunteer Movement and free trade (Chap. V.); the commercial arrangements between Great Britain and Ireland, 1782-1800 (Chap. VI.); the commercial arrangements effected between Great Britain and Ireland by the Act of Legislative Union (Chap. VII.). In this inquiry I will, as far as possible, confine myself to an examination of the statutes, which will speak for themselves; to the journals of the Parliaments of England and Ireland; and to the statements of contemporary speakers and writers whose accuracy has not, so far as I am aware, been impeached. FOOTNOTES: [1] Hansard, 260, Third Series, p. 893. [2] Hansard, 261, Third Series, p. 96. [3] Hansard, 261, Third Series, pp. 831, 832. [4] Hansard, 261, Third Series, P. 851. [5] Hansard, 261, Third Series, p. 853. [6] "New Views on Ireland," by C. Russell, Q.C., M.P., pp. 83, 84. [7] "English Men of Letters"--"Edmund Burke," by John Morley, p. 76. [8] _Freeman's Journal_, Nov. 24th, 1881. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. THE POLITICAL RELATIONS OF IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN 13