Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/163

Rh Of course, any perfect retrospect of the economic career of Ireland would necessarily involve a review of her political and religious history, but so large a treatment of the subject would not be adapted to the present cursory discussion. I am only anxious to point out, in a very few sentences, what those influences have been which have as effectually stunted the development of our material prosperity as penal laws and religious intolerance have vitiated our social atmosphere. I allude to the commercial jealousies of Great Britain.

It has been rather the custom of late to represent the landed interest of Great Britain as the sole inventors and patentees of protection. The experience of Ireland does not confirm this theory. During the course of the last 250 years we have successively tasted the tender mercies of every interest in turn—whether landed, trading, or commercial—and have little reason to pronounce one less selfish than another. From Queen Elizabeth's reign until within a few years of the Union the various commercial confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one, each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically