Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/176

Rh nobler oppression that is wont to characterize the acts of victorious nations.""There are those who think the Irish genius is unsuited to that eager and persevering pursuit of business which distinguishes the English people; and they argue that, but for this, the natives of a region in all respects so favourable to commerce must have triumphed over the obstacles that clogged their industry.""There is, we believe, one cause existing less connected with the injustice of England, and to which we are about to allude why Ireland is below us and other Protestant nations in the scale of cizilization; yet if we look to the prosperity of her staple manufacture, the only industry that was tolerated by the Government of this country,—it warrants the presumption that, under similar favouring circumstances, her woollens, or indeed her cottons might equally with her linens, have survived a competition with the fabrics of Great Britain."Cobden's Polit. Writings, Vol. I. p. 53.

"The two great objects for which the patriots contended were, legislative independence and commercial freedom."

"With regard to the latter object, it was not merely the mistaken or prejudiced policy of a party, but the pure selfishness and jealousy of the English nation, which denied this object to Ireland: it was a mixture of ignorance and selfishness not less prejudicial to British than to Irish prosperity. But I am only now concerned in showing that such was the spirit and disposition of the English towards the Irish people ; and that by its operation these feelings of animosity and alienation were so deeply rooted in the latter country, that no subsequent concessions, no change of policy, however liberal and complete, have been able to extirpate them. In proof of this part of the case I must produce the testimony of Mr. Huskisson. "Recollecting," he says, "that for centuries it has been a settled maxim of public policy, in all great states having dependencies, to make the interests of those dependencies subservient to the interests, or the supposed interests, of the parent state. There is, perhaps, no country where the consequences of persevering