She had, by an English Act of the same year, got the illusory privilege of having an eight-hundred-ton East Indiaman to make up a cargo for the East in her ports. But she had not free trade to the East, nor had she the admission to English ports for her goods.[143] "The practical boon," says Mr. Butt, "that was won for the Irish nation (by the Volunteers), was the right of the Parliament of Ireland to control our own harbours, and to regulate our own trade. Of course the trade of Ireland was subject to the interference which England could exercise by her dominion over the colonies and dependencies of the Imperial Crown. A law which would have prohibited the exportation of Irish goods either to England or France or Canada, would have been beyond the power of the English Parliament to pass, but it was perfectly competent to that Parliament to prohibit the importation of these goods into England or Canada, just in the same manner as the French Government might have prohibited their importation into France. The English Parliament was the supreme legislature for England and the colonies, and had just the same power of legislating against the importation of Irish products, as they would have had against those of Holland or of France." Thus stood the Irish Parliament in constitutional position from 1782 until its dissolution.[144] England, as we have seen, had laid prohibitory duties on Irish manufactures, whereas Ireland, bound by the chain of Poynings' Law, was unable to protect her own industries. "It was very natural," in the words of Mr. Pitt, "that Ireland, with an independent legislature, should now look for perfect equality." In 1783 Mr. Griffiths, advocating in the Irish House of Commons the protection of Irish manufacturers, said: "Lord North knew very well when he granted you a free trade that he gave you nothing, or, at most, a useless bauble, and when petitions were delivered against our free trade by several manufacturing towns in England, he assured them in circular letters that nothing effectual had or should be granted to Ireland."[145] The Irish Parliament, however, on obtaining legislative independence, refrained from measures of retaliation in the hope that the commercial relations of both countries would be settled on a satisfactory basis.