GEORGE III. XXII 1785. with inferiority. A great and generous effort BOOK was to be made by this country, and we were to choose between inevitable alternatives. Our manufactures however were so decidedly superior to theirs, that the immunities proposed would be in fact, and for many years to come, productive of little alteration. It would require time for the acquisition of both capital and skill; and as these increased, the difference between the price of labor there and in this country would be incessantly diminishing. After all, there might, he admitted, be some branches of manufacture in which Ireland might rival and perhaps excel England. But this ought not to give us pain. We must calculate from general and not from partial views. Above all, we should learn not to regard Ireland with an of jealousy. It required little philosophy to reconcile us to a competition which would give us a rich customer instead of a poor one. The prosperity of the sister kingdom would be a fresh and inexhaustible source of opulence to us." eye XI. That whatever sum the gross hereditary revenue of the kingdom, after deducting all drawbacks, re-payments, or bounties granted in the nature of drawbacks, shall produce above the sum of six hundred and fifty-six thousand pounds wherein the annual revenue shall equal in each of peace, year the annual expence, and in each year of war, without regard to such equality, should be appropriated towards the support of the naval force of the empire, in such manner as the parlia ment of Ireland shall direct. BOOK 1785. These comprehensive and liberal ideas, so opposite to the wisdom and policy of past ages, were on this great and interesting occasion received by the British house of commons with general complacency and approbation, and by the public at large with apparent tranquillity and acquiescence. The vastness of the plan, and the multiplicity and complexity of the objects which it embraced, seemed to keep the public mind in a kind of suspense; and for near a month after its first introduction there were no indications discernible of serious or determined opposition. Mr. Fox, indeed, at the onset of the business, commenced the attack, by sarcastically observing, that far the greater part of Mr. Pitt's speech was little else than a reply to Mr. Orde in the Irish house of commons. In Ireland, the propositions had been stated as in the highest degree advantageous to that country, as rendering it the emporium of Europe, and the source and supply of the British markets. Here the great recommendation of the system was, that the benefits accruing to Ireland were, if not wholly visionary, at best trivial and remote ;— that Ireland could not rival England;-that she was poor and feeble, and would very long, in all probability, remain so. He must, however, do Mr. Orde the justice to acknowledge, that his arguments were far the most solid and convincing. As to the report of the privy council, to whom the XXII. 1785. consideration of this business had been previously BOOK referred, Mr. Fox remarked, "that a question which appeared to him of primary importance had been entirely overlooked by them; he meant the propriety and policy of permitting the produce of Africa and America to be brought into Great Britain through Ireland. By this measure, we threw down the whole fabric of our navigation laws, The period was not very distant when the charter of the East-India Company would expire; and, according to the tenor of the resolutions now proposed, there remained no power in this country to renew it with the same or indeed any exclusive privileges. Mr. Fox censured the precipitancy with which this business was urged, and contended for the necessity of calling the merchants and manufacturers to the bar of the house, in order that the house might be fully informed in a case of this momentous nature, before they proceed to vote a definitive resolution." On the 14th of March, Mr. Eden moved, that the commissioners of customs and excise should be examined at the bar of the house; which was carried in the affirmative. On the same day a petition was presented by Mr. Stanley, member for Lancashire, from the manufacturers of that county, praying to be heard by counsel against the bill. Petitions were like 1785 BOOK wise presented from Liverpool, Glasgow, and XXII Manchester. The malign spirit of commercial jealousy appeared to be at length thoroughly awakened, and petitions upon petitions were sent up to parliament in incredible numbers, from every quarter of the kingdom. At the end of a long and tedious investigation of facts and examination of witnesses, Mr. Pitt was reluctantly compelled to acknowledge the necessity of making some material alterations and amendments in his original plan. Irish propositions al new-mo delled. On the 12th of May, 1785, Mr. Pitt brought tered and forward, in consequence of the additional lights thus thrown upon the business, a series of propositions, so altered, modified, and enlarged, as to exhibit in its new form what might well be considered as a new system. Mr. Fox, in the language of triumph, congratulated the house on the happy escape they had made from the system proposed by the chancellor of the exchequer but two months since, all opposition to which was then treated as the effect of faction and disappointment. "If (said Mr. Fox) the original resolutions had passed, we should have lost for ever the monopoly of the East-India trade; we must have hazarded all the revenue arising from spirituous liquors; we should have sacrificed the whole of the navigation laws of this country. If these resolutions had passed into a XXII. 1785. law, we should have risked the loss of the colonial BOOK and ill humour existing in that |