"From the time," says Hely Hutchinson, "of this prohibition [of the woollen manufactures] no Parliament was held in Ireland till the year 1703. Five years were suffered to elapse before any opportunity was given to apply a remedy to the many evils which such a prohibition must necessarily have occasioned. The linen trade was then not thoroughly established in Ireland; the woollen manufacture was the staple trade, and wool the principal material of that kingdom. The consequences of the prohibition appear in the session of 1713. The Commons lay before Queen Anne a most affecting representation containing, to use their own words, 'a true state of our deplorable condition,' protesting that no groundless discontent was the motive for that application, but a deep sense of the evil state of their country, and of the further mischiefs they have reason to fear will fall upon it if not timely prevented. They set forth the vast decay and loss of its trade, its being almost exhausted of coin that they are hindered from earning their livelihoods, and from maintaining their own manufactures; that their poor have thereby become very numerous; that great numbers of Protestant families have been constrained to remove out of the kingdom, as well into Scotland as into the dominions of foreign princes and states; and that their foreign trade and its returns are under such restrictions and discouragements as to be then become in a manner impracticable, although that kingdom had by its blood and treasure contributed to secure the plantation trade to the people of England. "In a further Address to the Queen, laid before the Duke of Ormonde, then Lord-Lieutenant, by the House, with its Speaker, they mention the distressed condition of that kingdom, and more especially of the industrious Protestants, by the almost total loss of trade and decay of their manufactures, and, to preserve the country from utter ruin, apply for liberty to export their linen manufactures to the Plantations. "In a subsequent part of this session the Commons resolve that, by reason of the great decay of trade and discouragement of the manufactures of this kingdom, many poor tradesmen were reduced to extreme want and beggary. This resolution was agreed to _nem. con._, and the Speaker, Mr. Broderick, then his Majesty's Solicitor-General, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, in his speech at the end of the session, informs the Lord-Lieutenant that 'the representation of the Commons was, as to the matters contained in it, the unanimous voice and consent of a very full House, and that the soft and gentle tones used by the Commons in laying the distressed condition of the kingdom before his Majesty, showed that their complaints proceeded not from querulousness, but from a necessity of seeking redress.'"[96]