William Pitt and national revival

There is a story, uncertain as to date and origin, which picturesquely describes Pitt’s indebtedness to the author of “The Wealth of Nations.”323 Adam Smith had been invited to meet the young Prime Minister at dinner; but some mischance delayed his arrival. Nevertheless, the guests patiently waited for him, and on his entrance Pitt exclaimed, “Nay, we will stand until you are seated; for we are all your scholars.” The compliment came with none the less graciousness because the father of Political Economy had in his work incautiously defined a statesman as “that insidious and crafty animal.” Pitt was now to give a new connotation to the word. Almost alone among the politicians of the eighteenth century, he had set himself to gain a store of knowledge which would enable him to cope with the increasingly complex problems of his craft; and thus, in an age when a university degree, the grand tour, and London club-life were held to be a sufficient preparation for a political career, he came forth like a Minerva fully armed at all points.

Among the practical questions to which the Scottish thinker turned the attention of his age, none was more important than those dealing with the relations between England and her American colonies, the desirability of an unfettered trade with France, and the need of a close union with Ireland. The first of these questions had been disposed of by war, and the second will engage our attention in a later chapter. On the Irish question Adam Smith strongly advocated union with Great Britain as conferring on the smaller island the boons which had breathed new life into Scotland, namely, freedom of trade and deliverance from an oppressive dominant caste.

These contentions must have secured the approval of Pitt; for the outlines of his policy both towards Ireland and France bear a striking resemblance to those sketched in “The Wealth of Nations,” with this important difference, that after the gain of independence by the Irish Legislature in 1782 the union of the two Parliaments was clearly impossible for the present. We therefore find Pitt turning his attention to the two topics which then chiefly agitated public opinion in Ireland, viz., the reform of Parliament and the fiscal relations to Great Britain. In order to understand Pitt’s handling of these problems it is necessary briefly to review the course of Anglo-Irish affairs.

The story of the dealings of England with the sister isle in the years 1688–1778 is one that it is painful to contemplate. The efforts to dragoon the Catholic Irish out of their creed, or to grind them into the lowest stratum of society, produced a race hatred of which we are still reaping the dire harvest. The Celt broods over the past; and his memory clings round the days when Papists were excluded from Parliament, from the possession of freehold estates, from the professions and from juries; when they might not act as guardians or possess a horse worth more than £5; and when their Protestant neighbours on tendering £5 could take any horse that pleased them. All this and far more may be read in the pages of Lecky. As for the ruffianly enactments of the Irish penal code, many of them were so monstrous as to bring their own cure. In the latter half of the eighteenth century even the arrogant Protestant squirearchy of Ireland found it impossible or undesirable to enforce them.

The growth of principles of toleration and enlightenment which marked the years 1760–80 had some effect even on the nominees of Protestant landlords and borough-mongers who formed the bulk of the Irish Parliament. It is a curious fact that even the narrowest and most bigoted of governing castes cannot wholly resist the tendencies of the times; and the Dublin Parliament, representing only a part even of the Protestant minority of Irishmen, was no more able to keep out new ideas than the members of the pocket boroughs of Britain could withstand the Reform movement of 1830–32. The infiltration of novel principles into the Irish Legislature was slower and more partial, inasmuch as that body misrepresented even more ludicrously the opinions of the mass of Irishmen.324 It had long been swayed by a clique of politicians who were termed “Undertakers,” because they undertook its manipulation, ostensibly in the interests of the British Government, but really in their own. The traditions of the past and the determination of the members of the Protestant Established Church to keep the Government in their own hands, formed a massive barrier against change. Yet the dissolving touch of the Time-Spirit and the shocks of war were at work upon that barrier; and when the war with the American colonies and France strained the resources of Great Britain and Ireland past endurance, it showed signs of giving way on two questions, the one religious, the other fiscal. In the year 1778, Catholics who took the oath of allegiance were allowed to become in effect owners of land, that is, they might hold land on lease for 999 years. Further, the odious temptations formerly held out to sons of Catholics to abjure their creed were also abrogated. That year therefore seemed to be the beginning of an epoch of toleration, which it was the ardent desire of Pitt to crown with an act of justice too long delayed.

At present, however, we are concerned mainly with his attempt to reform the fiscal relations between the two islands. Until the year 1778 Irishmen were still in the state of economic vassalage to England which the Parliaments of William III had forcibly imposed. In some respects, especially in regard to the woollen industry, they were now worse off than in that time of humiliation. The enactment of 1699, which absolutely forbade the export of her woollen goods, hopelessly crippled an otherwise promising industry. Nor was this all. Her staple product, wool, might not be sent to foreign lands lest their manufacturers might benefit, and become rivals to ours. That fear was not wholly groundless in the case of France; for French weavers found that Irish wool supplied the qualities lacking in their own wool. The result was the rise of an extensive smuggling trade in that article from Ireland to France, which the Government utterly failed to stop.

The outbreak of war with the American colonies, as I have said, brought all these questions to an acute phase; and in 1776 the British Government so far relaxed the prohibitions on export as to allow Irish woollens to be exported for the clothing of the Irish troops serving away from their own country. At the same time Irish fishermen were admitted to a share in the Newfoundland and other fisheries from which they had been excluded.

Nothing, however, was done for the most important of Irish manufactures. The linen industry had not been severely hampered by the British Government. While prohibiting the export of fine linens, and of sail-cloth, in the supposed interests of British manufacturers, the British Government granted bounties on the coarse linens exported from Ireland; and up to the year 1771 that industry had greatly prospered. Thereafter it underwent a serious decline. So alarming was the shrinkage of trade and the rise of Ireland’s debt, that in 1778 Lord North’s Ministry was fain to propose the abolition of many of the fiscal disabilities which sapped her strength. She was to be allowed to send her products to the British colonies and to receive theirs directly in return; but, in order to allay the fears of British manufacturers, the old restrictions on the Irish woollen trade remained in force. Nothing, however, could allay those fears. At once loud complaints were raised from Aberdeen to Plymouth, so that North gave up nearly all his proposals; and Ireland gained little or nothing from his well meant efforts, except that ships built in Ireland thenceforth counted as British-built, and could receive bounties granted for the fisheries.325

Where reason and statesmanship had failed, force was to succeed. The utter inability of the British Government to defend Ireland against threatened French invasions furnished the pretext for the formation of powerful Volunteer corps, consisting solely of Protestants, and therefore especially strong in Ulster. The Presbyterians of that province, smarting under the civic disabilities imposed by the old Test Act, and under an equally archaic system of commerce, demanded redress of these grievances, in the latter of which the more lethargic Romanists gave them increasing support. Religious antipathies were forgotten in the face of Ireland’s urgent needs. The governing coterie at Dublin Castle failed either to check the movement or to revive the old schisms. It seemed that the intolerable burdens of the British fiscal system were about to mould the jarring elements of Irish society into the unity that marks a nation.

Though they failed to reach that far-off goal, they for the present won a noteworthy success. By combining to refrain from the purchase of British goods they dealt a severe blow at the system thrust upon them. Nor did they abstain from threats of force. The Volunteers paraded the streets of Dublin with cannon bearing the motto, “Free Trade—or this.” In face of an overwhelming opposition, the Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Carlisle, advised the British Government to give way; and at the close of the year 1779, and early in 1780, a series of enactments was passed at Westminster withdrawing the prohibitions on the export of woollen goods and glass from Ireland. Commerce with the British colonies was now also provisionally thrown open to Irish merchants, and they were admitted to a share in the Levant trade.

At the same time the cause of religious toleration gained an equally signal triumph. The strength of the Ulster Volunteers and the abatement of religious bigotry brought the Irish Parliament to pass a measure for relieving the Protestant Dissenters of that land from the sacramental test which had been looked on as one of the bulwarks of the Established Church; and in the spring of 1780 the British Parliament gave its grudging assent to that boon for Ireland which for nearly half a century longer it persisted in withholding from Nonconformists in England and Wales. As was stated in Chapter V of this work, the Irish Volunteers in the year 1782 gained another most important concession, namely, the recognition of the legislative independence of the Irish Parliament. Fortunately the British Government on this occasion acted with grace and dignity. The Rockingham Ministry advocated the change, which passed both Houses with but a single adverse vote, that of Lord Loughborough. The disagreeable fact, that this last boon, like the others, was extorted by force, was thus tactfully glozed over; and when the suspicions of the good faith of England aroused in Ireland by that restless demagogue, Flood, were laid to rest by the Renunciation Act of the year 1783, the relations of the two islands became almost cordial.

Causes of friction, however, remained. The royal veto might, and probably would, still tell against the Irish Legislature, even though the veto of the British Parliament and of the Privy Council had lapsed. The influence of the Lord Lieutenant and of his Chief Secretary on the Irish Ministers was also great; and his influence was distinctly British. Dublin Castle could also generally determine the votes of a majority in both Houses of Parliament. Further, it was quite possible that on commercial questions the Irish Parliament would differ sharply from that of Westminster. This seemed so in the early months of Pitt’s Ministry. The beginning of the year 1784 found Ireland depressed by a very inclement winter; and the cry was raised that her Parliament should “protect” her industries, especially that of wool, from English competition. The exertions of the new Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Rutland, aided perhaps by the reluctance of the more moderate members to enter on a commercial war with England, sufficed to defeat these proposals; but the Irish House of Commons, in May 1784, unanimously passed an address to the King, emphasizing the need of “a wise and well-digested plan for a liberal arrangement of a commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland.” This was the friendly challenge which Pitt determined to take up. From the outset he made the Irish commercial question peculiarly his own. More than once in his correspondence with the Duke of Rutland he describes it as the nearest to his heart.326

No problem could have been more tangled. Ireland was still in a very restless state. Despite the warnings of that uncrowned King of Ireland, Grattan, the Volunteers began to enroll Catholics and to threaten the coercion of the Dublin Parliament. But, as the Duke of Rutland wrote to Pitt, Parliament “does not bear the smallest resemblance to representation”; and a petition from a great meeting held at Belfast in July 1784 declared that “the [Irish] House of Commons has degenerated into a fixed body so little connected with the people that it ceases to be a guardian of their property, and hath become the representative of an overbearing aristocracy.” The petitioners asserted that the delegates of the Volunteers were a representative body, and urged the King to dissolve the Irish House of Commons.327 This demand was widely echoed. The Volunteers, having already through their delegates exerted on Parliament a pressure which was semi-national, refused either to let politics alone, or to disband. Ultimately their recklessness and the efforts of Grattan undermined their influence, and they gradually dwindled away; but, for the present, they seemed able to extort all their demands, prominent among which was that for the “protection” of Irish industries and products. In his first long communication to Pitt, the Duke of Rutland dwelt on the urgent need of investigating Irish claims, though he frankly declared that he could not understand the commercial question. Open-handed to ostentation, and devoted to the pleasures of the table, this affable young aristocrat occasionally showed signs of political foresight, as when he ventured to predict “that without an union Ireland will not be connected with Great Britain in twenty years longer.”328

Far abler and more painstaking was his chief secretary, Orde, on whom was to fall the burden of work connected with the proposed Reform. The letters which passed between him and Pitt in the summer of 1784 show the care taken by both of them to master the facts of the situation. Orde (the future Lord Bolton) warned Pitt that a resolute effort would soon be made to effect the entire separation of the two Kingdoms, and urged him to “act towards Ireland with the utmost liberality consistent with your own safety: it must in the long run be the wisest policy.” Above all he insisted, as the duke had also done, on the need of a firm decision, which even the malcontents must regard as final.329

Pitt on his side sought to procure the fullest information on all points. In regard to the Reform of the Irish Parliament he deprecated any extreme measure such as the admission of the Roman Catholics then appeared to be; but he advocated the extension of political rights to Protestant Dissenters; for, as he forcibly put it, “we may keep the Parliament, but lose the people.” As for the fiscal question he required first of all a satisfactory knowledge of the facts, so that some general principles of action could be agreed on; and he urged that the financial relations of the Kingdoms should be regulated according as the prosperity of Ireland increased with her enlarged commercial opportunities. Justice required that Ireland should then take her share of the imperial burdens, which at present rested almost entirely with Great Britain. Finally they must seek some means calculated to bestow on Ireland that permanent tranquillity which the late commercial concessions had failed to secure.330

In this letter, dated 19th September 1784, we see not only an outline of the scheme which took definite form in the Irish Propositions, or Resolutions, of the session of 1785, but also an instructive example of Pitt’s methods of procedure. He began by collecting all the ascertainable facts, including the causes of previous failures, and, by sifting these data, he sought to arrive at general principles which would illuminate the whole question. In a word, his method was inductive. It begun with facts and ended with principles. Unlike the French legislators of 1789–93, who first enunciated principles and then sought to square the facts of life to them, he started with a solid basis and reared on it a structure from whose summit the toiler might take a wide survey. The Revolutionists built symmetrically and grandly, but without foundations.

In order thoroughly to master details, Pitt summoned from Ireland not only Orde but also Foster, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Beresford, Chief Commissioner of the Revenue. Both were able and masterful men, the former the doughtiest opponent, the latter the staunchest champion, of Pitt’s Act of Union. Beresford did much to beautify Dublin, and his name lives on in Beresford Place. With these experienced officials Pitt had many conferences at Downing Street, or at the house on the north side of Putney Heath, which he rented for the latter part of 1784. They confirmed Orde’s advice as to the wisdom of granting to Ireland complete liberty and equality in matters of trade, but warned him as to the difficulty of drawing from Ireland any contribution to the imperial funds. Here it should be remembered that Ireland supported 15,000 regular troops, 3,000 of whom were at the disposal of the British Executive in Ireland, while the others could be moved from Ireland with the consent of her Parliament.

Converse with Foster must also have strengthened Pitt’s resolve to press on the Reform of the Irish Parliament; for he now warned the Duke of Rutland, who stoutly opposed Reform, not to confuse peaceable efforts in that direction with subversive or treasonable schemes; and in a notable phrase of his letter of 4th December, he declared that Parliamentary Reform must sooner or later be carried in both countries. As regards procedure, he thought it best to postpone a change in the Irish franchise until a similar measure came forward at Westminster; for this, if successful, would impart to the movement in Ireland an irresistible force. In the meantime it would be well to take up the commercial problem.

Pitt’s sanguine temperament here led him into a tactical mistake. The Irish Resolutions were destined to arouse in Great Britain a storm of opposition which swept away the hopes of the Reform Associations; and the collapse of their efforts told unfavourably on the Irish political movement. Probably also he erred in bringing forward his proposals first in Dublin—a matter on which Fox readily aroused resentment at Westminster. Yet, where the issues were so tangled, it is difficult to say whether success could have crowned Pitt’s efforts had they been put forth in a different order.331 From his letter of 7th October 1784 to the Lord Lieutenant we see that he looked on the Reform of the Irish Parliament as simpler, but yet “perhaps more difficult and hazardous,” than the commercial questions then at stake.

Here again he calculated wrongly. Ireland’s demand for equality of trading advantages with Great Britain was certain to meet with vehement opposition from our manufacturers, as the events of the year 1778 convincingly showed. His mistake is the more remarkable as he proposed “to give Ireland an almost unlimited communication of commercial advantage, if we can receive in return some security that her strength and riches will be our benefit, and that she will contribute from time to time in their increasing proportions to the common exigencies of the Empire.”332 How buoyant was Pitt’s nature to cherish the hope that British merchants would concede commercial equality to Ireland, or that the factions at Dublin would take up the burdens of Empire!

No letter of Pitt’s rings with more enthusiasm, though an undertone of anxiety can be detected, than the very long one of 6th-7th January 1785. Writing until far past midnight he explained to the Lord-Lieutenant in great detail the aim which he had in view, namely, the sweeping aside of all local prejudices, so that England and Ireland might become “one country in effect, though for local concerns under distinct Legislatures.” The pupil of Adam Smith had caught a clear glimpse of the truth that States which throw down their customs’ barriers become effectually parts of the same body. But he now saw that British manufacturers would probably resist so sweeping a change; and he pointed out to Rutland that the admission of Ireland to commercial equality, even in the case of the export trade from British Colonies, to which, he said, she had no claim of right, involved a solemn duty to respond to imperial duties. He then pointed out that Ireland would have more than mere equality; for Great Britain was burdened by taxes which were the outcome of those duties; and Irish shippers, with their lighter burdens, might find it possible to export the produce of those colonies to Great Britain to the detriment of British shippers. In many ways he sought to disprove the claims or excuses put forward by Irish patriots why they should receive much and give little in return. He showed the impossibility of conceding so much unless Ireland would irrevocably pledge herself to contribute, according to her ability, to the expenses of the Empire.333

The despatches sent by the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, to the Lord Lieutenant, and the letters of Pitt to Orde, contained precise instructions on this last point. Pitt first desired that Ireland’s contribution should go towards the navy.334 Then for a time he harboured the notion that it should go towards his proposed Sinking Fund, because that money would not pass beyond England, and would return in the form of a trade the balance of which was known to be in favour of Ireland.335 But the Cabinet adopted the earlier proposal, with the proviso that the contribution towards the naval expenses of the Empire should be made in such a way as the Irish Parliament might direct. The letter of George III to Pitt, of 28th January 1785, shows that the King insisted on a contribution from Ireland as essential.

The ten Propositions, or Resolutions, embodying the aims of Pitt, were brought before the Irish Parliament on 7th February 1785. They embodied the information gleaned from Beresford, Foster, and Orde; and a report recently drawn up by a special committee of the British Privy Council also furnished useful information. Modified in some particulars, and, with the addition of a Proposition soon to be noticed, they passed the Dublin Parliament with little difficulty. In their modified form they may be summarized as follows. Foreign and colonial products were to pass between Great Britain and Ireland, in either direction, without any increase of duty. The goods and products of the sister islands were also to be imported either free or at identical rates; or again, where the duties were not equal, they were to be reduced to the lower of the two tariffs hitherto in operation. All prohibitions on inter-insular trade were to lapse without renewal, unless it should seem expedient in the case of corn, meal, malt, flour, and biscuits. The British Government required that, when the “hereditary revenue” exceeded a certain sum, Ireland should pay over the surplus as a contribution to the naval expenses of the Empire. As the “hereditary revenue” consisted mainly of custom and excise duties, its increase (which was generally steady) afforded the best index of the prosperity of Ireland. Moreover that branch of the revenue had hitherto been under the general direction of the Crown; and Pitt’s proposal to transfer its surplus to the control of the Irish Parliament was both statesmanlike and conciliatory.336

Nevertheless, the letters of the Duke of Rutland to Pitt revealed the conviction even of the best friends of Government that the Propositions would fail if they were coupled with any demand for a money payment. The time, said the Duke, was very critical. They were seeking to organize a legal militia force in place of the self-constituted Volunteers; Grattan and Daly had spoken splendidly for the change; but the demand for a subsidy would jeopardize everything, even the connection with Great Britain.337 A secret report which he sent to Pitt showed that of the members of the large towns of Ireland, only Londonderry was well disposed to the Resolutions. In the case of Waterford (“well governed, under Lord Tyrone’s influence”) the freemen opposed them while the two members supported them. Belfast, a close borough, opposed them. In all, he reckoned forty-five members hostile, twelve friendly, and the others absent or not accounted for. A list followed of the “expectations” of members as regards judgeships, pensions and sinecures.338

As Rutland and Orde had foreseen, the assailants of the measure fastened on the question of the contribution. How could a country, whose annual expenditure at present exceeded income by £150,000, and whose absentee landlords drained her of a million a year, pay a large sum to the richer island? Did not Ireland contribute largely in men and money to the army? And was not a great part of her administration controlled by a Monarch and a Ministry in whose succession and appointment she had no voice? Such were the invectives of that most acrid and restless of demagogues, Flood. Far more statesmanlike was the conduct of Grattan. Equalling, nay excelling, Flood in his oratorical powers, he held them under the control of a masculine reason. As his energy and tact had gained for his land the boon of legislative independence, so now he sought to cement friendly relations with Great Britain, and therefore gave a general assent to the commercial proposals. The Irish Ministers also pointed out that Great Britain opened a far larger market than Ireland did; that the industries of the larger island, being handicapped by war taxes and high wages, could be exploited by Irishmen, whose national burdens were comparatively light, and that the colonial trade was now to be opened up in its entirety and for ever, not on terms that were revocable at the option of the British Government, as was the case in 1780.

All these arguments were of no avail to carry the proposal respecting Ireland’s contribution to the navy. Though Pitt had carefully framed it so that Ireland would pay nothing until she was in a prosperous state, he failed to meet the rooted objections of the Dublin Parliament to money going out of the country. Grattan focused the opposition by demanding that Ireland should pay nothing until her Government had put an end to the long series of deficits. In private conversations with him Orde failed to weaken this decision, in which nearly all Irishmen concurred. A Resolution to that effect was therefore added. It was further arranged that when the annual hereditary revenue, which then stood at £652,000, should exceed £656,000 in time of peace, the surplus should go towards the support of the imperial navy in such a way as the Irish Parliament should direct. Additional taxes were then voted which were estimated to yield £140,000 a year.

No beginning could have been less auspicious. The arrangement was far less satisfactory than the worst of the alternative plans to which Pitt expressed the hope that Orde would never resort. The contribution, on the present terms, could be evaded by any juggling Chancellor of the Exchequer who should contrive a series of small and profitable deficits. Consequently Orde, who came to London to persuade Pitt of the need of the change, found him inexorable. Pitt was resolved “not to proceed until the condition should be taken away from the last Resolution.”339 This also appears in a part of his letter to the Marquis of Buckingham:

In opening his case at Westminster on 22nd February, Pitt had to contend with the discouragement caused by this rebuff, and with a fit of hoarseness, which he informed Grenville he had been trying to sleep off without much success. Nevertheless his speech was allowed to be a fine effort. He besought members fairly to consider his proposals, which aimed at settling the relations of the two islands on a liberal and permanent basis. Glancing scornfully at the tactics of the Opposition and the campaign of malice and misrepresentation started by the “Gazetteer” and taken up by various trading bodies, he claimed that there should be fair play, at least until he had stated his case fully. It was complex, and his proposals might need modification in details. The old system of cruel and abominable restraint imposed on Irish trade had vanished. They now had to complete a new system, and community of benefits was the only principle on which they could proceed. They proposed entirely and for ever to open to Ireland the trade of our colonies except that of India, which was a monopoly of the East India Company. There was no solid ground for the fear that so poor a country as Ireland would become the emporium of colonial goods, and would re-export them to our shores. Equally unlikely was the suggestion that Ireland would undersell us in manufactures; for British energy had secured for our goods a fairly large market in Ireland even against her import duties. He then referred guardedly to the subject of Ireland’s contribution to the imperial navy. Finally, while deprecating any immediate decision, he declared that what England lost by the bargain she would more than recoup from the growing friendliness and prosperity of the sister island. He therefore proposed a general motion for the permanent and irrevocable admission of Ireland to all the advantages of British commerce when she irrevocably pledged herself to pay a sum towards the defence of commerce.341

The Opposition, exasperated by Pitt’s ungenerous treatment of Fox concerning the Westminster election, at once opened a furious fire of criticisms. Fox, who held the old Whig views in favour of a “national commerce,” that is, protection, urged that Ireland would probably smuggle into Great Britain the produce of foreign colonies, and would become the “grand arbitress of all the commercial interests of the Empire.” The Resolutions ought, he claimed, first to have been moved at Westminster, in which he was probably right. If they were passed, he said, Great Britain would never have anything more to concede to Ireland. The Navigation Acts, the source of England’s prosperity, would be a dead letter. As for Ireland’s contribution to the navy, he would “trust everything to her generosity, but not much to her prudence.” Eden, formerly Irish Secretary, then dwelt on the danger of allowing a lightly taxed country to compete with a heavily burdened country. The debt of Great Britain was a hundredfold that of Ireland; and, while a Briton paid on an average fifty shillings a year in taxes, an Irishman paid only eight shillings. The plan now proposed would be a revolution in British trade. These words are remarkable in view of Eden’s desertion of North and his assistance to Pitt in carrying through a still greater “revolution,” the commercial treaty with France of 1786. The speeches of Fox and Eden did some good; their attack on Pitt’s measure convinced Irishmen that it must have many excellences. The Earl of Mornington (afterwards the Marquis Wellesley) declared that Ireland would warmly support Pitt. Beresford also stated that the Irish members now only wanted an excuse for siding with him; but England must beware of pressing Ireland too hard in this bargain. A rebuff would seriously jeopardize the cause of order.342

No sense of prudence or responsibility restrained the action of the British Opposition and their mercantile allies. A campaign had already begun. It bore signs of careful organization. The signal was given by the “Gazetteer” of 16th February, which pointed out that the Navigation Acts, the source of Britain’s prosperity, would be virtually annulled by Pitt’s proposals. On the next day it showed that Irish competition, based on low wages, must ruin our industries. On 18th February a meeting of silk manufacturers protested against the Resolutions. On the 24th the planters and merchants of the West Indies followed suit. On that day the “Gazetteer” stated that, if Pitt’s measure became law, the Exchange would be transferred from Cornhill to Cork; later on it declared that Arkwright and Dempster would set up their factories in Ireland. On 3rd March the “Morning Chronicle,” the organ of the middle classes, joined in the hue and cry, declaring that even as it was the balance of trade between Great Britain and Ireland was in favour of the latter, and that the larger island must be drained of money by the smaller if the old restrictions were not maintained.

Meetings of protest were now in full swing. Delegates of the West India merchants had an interview with Pitt and declared his answer to be unsatisfactory. The merchants themselves refused, by fifty-nine to forty, to petition against his proposals, but the minority published and circulated their opinions. The manufacturing towns, except those of the woollen districts, petitioned strongly against the Resolutions. Manchester, Lancaster, and Dudley each sent two petitions to that effect; while three apiece emanated from Glasgow, Paisley, and Bristol. So the game of misrepresentation went on. A petition from Lancashire contained 80,000 signatures; and a document purporting to come from 13,243 weavers of Glasgow and Rutherglen, shows that artisans were as much alarmed as the merchants. The weavers stated their conviction that if the Resolutions became law, they would be undersold by the Irish in the home market and reduced to beggary.343 This solidarity of interest is noteworthy. In those days the “manufacturer” was actually, as well as in name, the weaver; and tens of thousands of households, where the hand-loom kept the wolf from the door through the winter, saw pale Ruin stalking behind the figure of thrifty, resourceful, energetic Paddy. The agitation therefore spread through all classes with a unanimity that would scarcely be possible now, when the term “manufacturer” has come to mean a capitalist who owns a factory where nothing is done by hand. Then the solidarity of interest between merchants and weavers was obvious. In imagination both classes saw their industries wafted by a cruel east wind to a land whose inhabitants they disliked and despised.

Some of the petitions were based on false information. That of the Glasgow cotton workers complained that the fourth Resolution, as it left the Irish Parliament, would place a heavy duty on British cottons.344 But Pitt had throughout insisted that there must be an equalizing of duties on both sides of the Irish Sea, the lower level being always taken. In truth, all reasoning was in vain. The protectionist spirit was proof against all arguments. Thus, the committee of the merchants and manufacturers of Sheffield declared that their industry could not be carried on without grave injury if the present duty on bar iron imported into Great Britain, namely, 56 shillings per ton, were reduced to the level then obtaining in Ireland, that is, 10 shillings a ton.

Still keener was the opposition in Bristol. The protectionist feeling had lost none of the bitterness which mainly caused the unseating of Burke in the election of 1774. The sugar refiners of that town now declared that they had spent more than £150,000 in buildings and plant, all of which would go for naught, if the Irish Parliament, “under the privilege of importing raw and refined sugars through that country to this [should] lay a heavy duty on loaf and lump sugar and a small duty on bastard and ground sugars and molasses”; for the Irish merchants would then “effectually prevent our exporting the former to that kingdom and also to foreign markets, and enable them to send the latter into Great Britain at a less price than it can be manufactured here under the burthen of the high duties, the high price of labour, and heavy taxes, which would inevitably tend to the ruin of that valuable branch of trade in this kingdom.”345 The Bristol sugar-refiners can scarcely have read Pitt’s proposals, which implied equal duties on all articles at British and Irish ports; and the Irish Parliament had agreed to this. The notion that Irish sugar-refiners, by complex duties of their own devising, would soon beat their British rivals out of foreign markets and ruin them in the home market, is a sign of the mad folly of the time. Against stupidity such as this even the gods fight in vain.

By no arguments could the hubbub be appeased. Pamphlets, especially one by Lord Sheffield, denounced the doom awaiting England should Pitt’s Resolutions pass. In a short time sixty-four petitions poured in against them;346 and the manufacturers of Great Britain, under the chairmanship of Wedgwood, formed a “Great Chamber” in order to stave off the catastrophe. Yet Pitt’s energies and spirits seemed to rise with the rising opposition. In order to emphasize the importance of commerce, he had recently appointed a Committee of Council for Commerce, which promised to answer the purposes which that ornamental body, the Board of Trade (abolished in 1782), had signally failed to fulfil. The new Council was charged to examine manufacturers and others as to the relations of Anglo-Irish commerce and the probable effect of the Resolutions. Similar investigations were made at the bar of the House of Commons. Pitt cherished high hopes from these inquiries. “The more the subject is discussed,” he wrote to Orde on 4th April, “the more our cause will be benefited in the end.... I do not myself entertain a doubt of complete success.” To the Duke of Rutland he wrote on the 16th: “Though we may lose a little in popularity for the time, we shall ultimately gain—at least the country will, which is enough.”347

The report of the committee is very curious, as showing the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy statistics even on the weightiest topics. The Irish accounts showed a far larger export of goods to Great Britain than of imports from Great Britain; while, on the contrary, the British Custom House returns gave the balance of trade as largely against Ireland. The committee could discover no means of accounting for this extraordinary discrepancy.348 Thus, while protectionists on both sides of the Irish Sea were croaking over the decline of their trade and the growth of that of their rival, the official returns showed that (as they would have phrased it) the balance of trade was so largely in their favour as to warrant the hope of the speedy exhaustion of that rival.

In matters which were within the ken of the financiers of that age, the report was reassuring. The woollen manufacturers of Norwich declared that, though the wages of Irish spinners were less by one-half than those of English spinners, Irish competition was not to be feared under the conditions now proposed. Everett, a London merchant, maintained that the British manufacturers, owing to their skill, taste, and ingenuity, would always have a superiority over those of Ireland, provided that British sheep and wool were not exported thither. Nine woollen manufacturers of Yorkshire were decidedly of this opinion. The chief clothier of Devizes expected harm from Irish competition only in the cheaper stuffs.349 For the cotton industry the evidence was less encouraging, the witnesses from Manchester claiming that Irish thread could be spun 20 per cent. cheaper than British thread, and that an import duty of 10½ per cent. was needed to protect the home market.350 Representative silk merchants of London and Scotland had little apprehension for the future, until the Irish workers developed skill and taste.351 As for the iron trade, the evidence of eight iron-masters who were examined refuted the reasoning of the Sheffield petition. Provided that Ireland did not pay a smaller duty than Great Britain on imports of bar iron, they asserted that they could hold their own against her small and struggling iron industry.352

In face of the alarmist statements of Wedgwood in public, his evidence before the committee is of some interest. When asked whether he feared Irish competition in pottery if the duties in both kingdoms were equalized, he replied that “there might be danger of a competition in time, in their own and every foreign market.353 I should think we were safer if earthenware was allowed to be imported free of all duties into both countries.” This was the man who headed the protectionist “Great Chamber of Manufacturers.” Wedgwood’s chief manager admitted that he had only the day before heard that any pottery at all was made in Ireland. Is it surprising that Pitt sharply criticized Wedgwood’s tactics?

Other strange features of this report are, first, that the outcry in England against any relaxation of duties was greatest in the case of the very articles, calicoes and sugar, in which the Irish Parliament had recently imposed higher duties; secondly, that whereas much of the evidence told in favour of inter-insular Free Trade, the committee decided in favour of a system of moderate duties to be agreed on by the two Governments.354 Some such conclusion was perhaps inevitable in view of the popular clamour; but the committee made no suggestion how the two Parliaments, now drifting into fiscal hostility, were to come to terms.

If the evidence contained in the report had been duly weighed, the scare among British traders must have passed away; but official reports are of little avail to thwart the efforts of panic-mongers. In vain did George Rose, in an unsigned pamphlet, point the moral of the case, and appeal to the common sense of his countrymen.355 The Opposition had the ear of the public, and the fate of the Resolutions in their present form was evidently sealed. Probably Pulteney was right in stating that the report came out too late to influence public opinion, and that Pitt had unaccountably underrated the force of the prejudices contending against him. Now, when the vote on the Westminster Scrutiny alarmed him, he became perhaps unduly cautious.356 This may be the true explanation of his disposition to compromise. In his letter of 21st May, to the Duke of Rutland, he dwelt on the difficulties arising from the unscrupulous tactics of the enemy and the very marked independence of a large number of his supporters, so that “we are hardly sure from day to day what impression they may receive.”

This avowal is of some interest. It shows how critical was Pitt’s position in the spring of 1785. As has been seen in a former chapter, he had strained the allegiance of his motley following by taking up too many thorny questions at once. The composite elements—Foxite, Northite, and Chathamite—had not yet been fused into unity by the power of his genius and the threatening pressure of France. Only by the most careful leading could he keep his supporters together, and save the country from the turmoil which a Fox-North Ministry must have caused. There was the danger; and we may be sure that Pitt clung to office, not merely from love of power (though he did love power), but because, in the proud words of Chatham, he knew that he could guide his country aright, and that no one else could.

Viewing the question of the independence of members of Parliament in a more general way, we may hazard the conjecture that in the days of pocket boroughs and small electorates members probably acted more independently than in the present time, when their action is apt to be the resultant of two external forces, pressure from constituents and pressure from the party “whip.” However we may explain the fact, it is certain that Pitt, despite his huge majority, failed to carry three important proposals in 1785–6; and in the case of the Irish Propositions he hesitated and lost the day.