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Home History of Ireland, 1689-1815 1689-1815; Part 3 |
1689-1815; Part 3It proceeded, in William III's reign, to prohibit altogether the exportation of Irish woollen manufactures, and to confine the export of Irish unmanufactured wool to England alone, where the wool had to pay heavy import duties (It is true that after 1743 the British government encouraged the flax and linen industry at Belfast; but that was inadequate compensation). Irish industries were thus ruined. But this does not exhaust the evils from which Ireland suffered. As a consequence of the Irish support to James II, a great deal of land had been confiscated, and it is reckoned that, after the Revolution, three-fourths of it belonged to owners of British descent. A large number of these owners lived in England in the eighteenth century, and let their land to people called "middlemen", who often rackrented and exploited the smaller tenants to whom they sublet. The wretched Irish peasant, paying rent to a middleman, tithes to the Protestant clergyman, and dues to his Roman Catholic priest, had in some cases, it was said, "hardly the skin of a potato to subsist upon".Such were the conditions of Ireland in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and they all combined to degrade and to debase the great mass of the population and to make the country a most unhappy one. The more energetic and ambitious Irishmen, indeed, left their own country to pursue their fortunes elsewhere, Spain, for instance, possessed five Irish regiments, and within a hundred years a quarter of a million Irishmen, it is said, joined the Irish Brigade in France. It was that brigade which took the chief share in defeating the British at Almanza and at Fontenoy, and which caused, so tradition says, George II to say at Dettingen, "Curse on the laws which deprive me of such men." To Austria Ireland supplied some of her best generals, and to Russia two field-marshals (One of these was the famous Peter Lacy. He began his martial career at the age of thirteen, fighting in defence of Limerick. Subsequently he entered the Russian service, and fought against Danes, Swedes, and Turks, and he finally became Governor of Livonia. He is credited with having converted the Russian troops from the worst troops in Europe to some of the best, and a division of the Russian army is still called after him), whilst Coote's opponent at the hard-fought battle of Wandewash was of Irish extraction. We must now see how the conditions in Ireland were gradually improved during the later portion of the eighteenth century. In the first place, it was found impossible in practice to carry out the laws imposing restrictions on the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, and even before the middle of the century these laws were to all intents and purposes obsolete. The American War of Independence brought further relief to the Catholics; for the British Government, anxious to conciliate opinion in Ireland, encouraged the Irish Parliament to repeal the laws prohibiting Roman Catholics from buying land (1778), and before the war was over other concessions followed. |
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