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BOOK as a Protestant state if the protection of England were withdrawn." After a vehement debate, in which both parties exerted their utmost ability and eloquence, the house divided at nine in the morning upon the motion of Mr. Orde for leave to bring in the bill, ayes 127, noes 108. Such a division in the first stage of the business was equivalent to a defeat: and on the Monday following, Mr. Orde moved the first reading of the bill and the printing it; declaring, that he did not intend to make any further progress in the business dur, ing the present session. He had completed his duty respecting it. If it were revived, it must be by a motion from the public, who at the commencement of the ensuing session might take such further steps as they thought proper.

Their final

rejection by

parliament.

In order to preclude a motion of censure framed the Irish by Mr. Flood, the secretary then moved an adjournment; and Mr. Flood consenting, not without difficulty, to wave his motion, the adjournment was carried without a division. Public illu, minations testified the joy excited by the sudden termination of this extraordinary business; and from this period no effort has been made in either kingdom to revive in any shape this important and interesting discussion.

Upon the whole, though it might perhaps justly be regarded as too daring an experiment, the bability is, that a commercial treaty founded on

pro

1

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the basis of the original propositions would have BOOK proved very beneficial in practice. The prodigious inferiority of skill, of credit, and of capital, must have effectually prevented Ireland from becoming formidable as a competitor to England; and in proportion as Ireland advanced in opulence, her artificial wants would have increased, and consequently her consumption of British manufactures and commodities.

Notwithstanding the great alarm excited when the first commercial concessions were made to Ireland, no detriment was in fact sustained by Great Britain; on the contrary, the trade to England continued rapidly to increase, even in regard to those very articles which Ireland was allowed to import from the place of their growth and produce. From the year 1781 to the year 1784 muscovado sugars imported from the West Indies rose from 7,384 cwt. to 27,492 cwt.; and in the same term sugars imported from Britain rose from 130,056 to 160,c83 cwt. Another remarkable fact is, that the linen manufacture both in England and Scotland has flourished with constant and regular acceleration, notwithstanding the unlimited competition of the Irish nation. According to a seven years' average, ending A. D. 1755, not more than 576,373 yards were exported from England; and in the year 1771 the export amounted to no less than 4,411,040 yards. Why

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BOOK then might not a similar competition be as safely and advantageously established in other branches of commerce? These arithmetical statements shew to a demonstration the extreme weakness and futility of those fears and apprehensions which are so apt to agitate the mercantile world at the slightest breath of innovation, and their total incompetency to deduce, from a comprehensive and impartial survey of the whole system, just and accurate conclusions. Considering, nevertheless, the narrow limits of the highest human sagacity, it must be acknowledged that prudence would have dictated a temporary duration to this commercial arrangement, in order to bring the utility of it to the infallible touchstone of experi ence. As to the fourth proposition of the English series, which was the immediate cause of the virtual rejection of the whole, it might in all pro. bability have been very safely dispensed with, as there is no reason to doubt but that Ireland would have spontaneously adopted with good-faith and good-will any regulations necessary to enforce a treaty which she found upon the whole conducive to her prosperity; and the perpetuity of which must have been, in some mode explicit or implicit, made to depend upon such adoption.

Session of

parliament.

The parliament of Great Britain, after a tranquil interval of a few months, met on the 24th of January, 1786. In the speech from the throne

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the king declared to the house of commons his BOOK earnest wish to enforce œconomy in every department; recommended to them the maintenance of our naval strength on the most- respectable foot. ing; and above all the establishinent of a FIXED PLAN for the reduction of the NATIONAL debt. Nothing remarkable passed until about the middle of February, when the estimate of the ordnance was brought up in the Committee of Supply. Upon Fortification project this occasion Mr. Pitt called the attention of the of the duke house to the plan laid before them in the course of of Richthe last session, under the sanction of the duke of Richmond, master-general of the ordnance, for FORTIFYING the DOCK-YARDS of the kingdom; the propriety of which it was then agreed to refer to a board of land and sea officers, whose report Mr. Pitt stated to be in the highest degree favorable to the plan of fortification submitted to their decision; but the report itself he declined, as a matter of too serious and delicate a nature, to lay before the house.

The discontent and surprise manifested when the question was last year under discussion now rose into great warmth of indignation and resentment. "If the report or the essentials it contained were not to be in some mode subject to the inspection of the house, they were, it was affirmed, in exactly the same situation in which they had stood before the Board was appointed. They must

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BOOK decide, not upon their own judgments, but in deference to the authority of others. But the house of commons were not justified in voting away the money of their constituents upon the grounds of passive complaisance and courtly submission. The expence attending this novel system would be enormous, and it was their duty before they adopted it to be fully convinced of its necessity."

General Burgoyne, who was one of the Board, controverted the assertion of Mr. Pitt as to the entire approbation expressed by them of the system in question. "It was well known (he said) that cases hypothetically put admitted only of a direct answer given under the admission of the hypothesis. It remained to be ascertained, whether the case thus hypothetically put was sufficiently within the limits of probability to deserve attention. Several of the cases on which the Board were called upon to decide were mere postulata, and hypothetically as extravagant as if it were asked, Suppose by some convulsion of nature the Straits of Dover should vanish out of existence, and the coasts of England and France were to unite, would it not be expedient to fortify the isthmus between the two countries?"

Mr. Pitt, waving the farther discussion of the question for the present, declared his determination to bring the business in the most specific and solemn manner before the house. He accordingly

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