defeated him on the commercial part of the question, he artfully, as Lord Stanhope shows, changed his ground of attack, and availing himself of the limitations which Pitt had been compelled to introduce into his original scheme, Fox cried out that this was a breach of Ireland's newly-granted independence. 'I will not,' said Fox, with incredible hypocrisy, or with incredible folly, 'I will not barter English commerce for Irish slavery, this is not the price I would pay, nor is this the thing I would purchase.'" "When the twenty propositions of Mr. Pitt were returned to the Irish Parliament, they encountered a fierce and protracted opposition. Mr. Grattan's speech has been extolled as one of his ablest--it is not intemperate. His chief objection was to the fourth resolution, by which he said, 'We are to agree to subscribe whatever laws the Parliament (of England) shall subscribe respecting navigation; we are to have no legislative power--then there is an end of your free trade and of your free Constitution.' He also curiously objected that the measure was 'an union--an incipient and a creeping union--a virtual union establishing one will in the general concerns of commerce and navigation, and reposing that will in the Parliament of Great Britain.'" "Dublin was illuminated, the people exulted in the abandonment of the scheme."[147] "It was not," says Mr. John O'Connell, "till after a fair experiment and delay that the Irish Parliament, despairing of getting England to terms by fair means, commenced retaliation. To this we have the incontestable testimony of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry in 1822, an authority by no means disposed to be over-favourable to Irish interests or over-anxious for the credit of the Irish Parliament. In their fourth report, speaking of the system of restrictions on English goods and bounties on their own, to which that Parliament had recourse, they say: "Ireland was undoubtedly instigated to the adoption of this course by the exclusive spirit of the commercial policy of England. It will be found that few exceptions in favour of the sister kingdom were inserted in the list of goods absolutely prohibited to be imported into this country (England), in which list all goods made of cotton-wool, every description of manufactured woollen, silk, and leather, together with cattle, sheep, malt, stuffs, and other less important articles were at one time comprehended. In this embarrassing situation of exclusion from the markets of Great Britain, and deriving little assistance from foreign trade, Ireland had no other course to pursue for the protection of her own industry except that of maintaining, by restrictive duties on the importations from Great Britain, the manufacturing means she possessed for the supply of her own markets."[148] That Ireland made a great advance in prosperity in the interval between 1782 and 1800 is in my judgment incontrovertible.