Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/104

Charles II On the question of the land and on the question of the Church the English Government and the Anglo-Irish colonists had cordially cooperated in opposition to the native Irish. There now rose into prominence another class of questions on which their harmony was somewhat rudely interrupted. In the seventeenth century, the English, like all other European nations, were firmly imbued with a belief in the economic theory known as mercantilism, and were not more anxious to despoil the Catholic Irish for the benefit of the English colony than to plunder that very colony for their own. It is not, however, until the reign of Charles the Second that we find a deliberate attempt on the part of the English legislature to repress the commercial prosperity of Ireland. During the four centuries which elapsed between the first Norman invasion and the death of Elizabeth, the unsettled condition of the country and the perpetual conflicts between the Government and the native chieftains had effectually prevented the growth of any formidable industry; and, although Strafford, anticipating the commercial policy of a later age, had subsequently exerted himself to suppress the woollen manufacture, his exertions had not taken legislative form. The Navigation Act of 1660 had drawn no distinction between English and 92