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Sarsfield the Catholic magnates, who opposed all liberty for the Irish, and desired to retain for England a complete control of Irish commerce. We find also in the State Papers a letter from Pointis, a French engineer (constructor of the boom which did not obstruct the Foyle), where this artificer complains bitterly of the ill supply of munitions. The French war office, acting after the kind of war offices, had sent balls which did not fit the cannon, fuses which did not fit the touch-holes. But the worst obstacle lay in his Majesty's "resistance almost insurmountable to spending his money on things absolutely necessary." Melfort may have been the cause, said Pointis; and many passages in D'Avaux make it clear that James, advised by Melfort, was husbanding the money to spend in Scotland and in England. This might have been pardonable, had they done their best to develop the local resources—on which, in the last resort, the war relied. In a remarkable letter from one of the Lords Justices, written early in 1691, there is this statement: "It is not the King of France who supplies the Irish, he not being at one penny's expense to do it, but it is the advantageous trade in hides and tallow that does it; the profit is cent. per cent., and the trade with Ireland is better than the trade with the Indies." There- 258