In the summer of 1697 the principal subject which engaged the attention of the commission was the best means of discouraging the Irish woollen manufacture, and of, at the same time, encouraging the Irish linen manufacture. Each commissioner was invited to bring up a separate report. Three did so. Locke's was the one selected, and, with slight alterations, was signed by the other commissioners on the 31st of August, and forwarded almost immediately afterwards to the Lords Justices. This interesting state-document proceeds entirely upon the notions of protection to native industries which were then almost universally current among statesmen and merchants. The problems were to secure to England the monopoly of what was then regarded as its peculiar and appropriate manufacture, the woollen trade, and to assign to Ireland, in return for the restrictions imposed upon her, some compensating branch of industry. According to the ideas then commonly prevalent, the scheme was perfectly equitable to both countries. But, naturally, the interests of England are put in the foreground. The interests of the Irish people, however, were not to be neglected, and what Locke doubtless conceived as full compensation was to be given them for the loss of their woollen trade. "And since it generally proves ineffectual, and we conceive it hard to endeavour to drive men from the trade they are employed in by bare prohibition, without offering them at the same time some other trade which, if they please, may turn to account, we humbly propose that the linen manufacture be set on foot, and so encouraged in Ireland as may make it the general trade of that country as effectually as the woollen manufacture is, and must be, of England." Linen cloth and all other manufactures made of flax or hemp, without any mixture of wool, were to be exported to all places duty free, as indeed had already been provided by Act of Parliament with regard to England. One method by which Locke proposed to encourage the linen manufacture in Ireland runs so counter to modern notions with regard both to the education of the poor and to freedom of employment, that it may be interesting to the reader to see the suggestion at length: