Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/93

Rh "William of Malmesbury, it may be observed, seems to speak of the trade between England and Ireland as one which the former country could dispense with without any serious inconvenience, but upon which the latter was dependent for the necessaries of life. He tells us that upon one occasion, when the Irish monarch, Murcard (or Murtach) O'Brien, behaved somewhat haughtily towards Henry I., he was speedily humbled by the English king prohibiting all trade between the two countries; "for how wretched," adds the historian, "would Ireland be if no goods were imported into it from England." Perhaps English agricultural produce was exchanged for Irish gold.

In the violent transference and waste of property, however, that followed the Conquest, and the long struggle the invaders had to sustain before they made good their footing in the country, the wealth, and commerce, and general industry of England must all have received a shock from which it was not possible that they could rapidly recover. The minds and the hands of men were necessarily called away from all peaceful pursuits, and engaged in labours which produced no wealth. Nor was the system of government and of society that was at last established favourable, even after its consolidation and settlement, to trade and industry. It was a system of oppression and severe exaction on the one hand, depriving the industrious citizen of the fruits of his exertions and of the motive to labour; and, on the ether hand, it was a system of which the animating principle was the encouragement of the martial spirit, to which that of trade and industry is as much opposed as creation is opposed to destruction.

Two charters were granted to the city of London by the Conqueror, and a third by Henry I.; but it is remarkable that not even in the last-mentioned, which is of considerable length, and confers numerous privileges, is there anything relating to the subject of commerce, with the exception of a clause, declaring that all the men of London and their goods should be exempted throughout England and also in the ports from all tolls and other