Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/320

After Limerick quantities to Ireland on payment of the usual small Irish duty of ten per cent., while they prevented the Irish from exporting beer or malt to them by means of import duties equal to a prohibition. In another way, too, England took care that Irish breweries should not compete with British. Hops could not very well be grown in Ireland, for they were too uncertain a crop for the small capitalist who engaged in farming. The British Act which laid down that no hops should be imported into Ireland except from Great Britain, in British ships, and being of British growth, left Ireland at the mercy of the British hop growers for one of the necessaries of life. In many other ways Irish manufacturers were left at the mercy of England for their raw material, and forced to pay higher prices than they need otherwise have done. Again, restraints were placed on every Irish industry which might possibly compete with the corresponding British industry, and indeed on those industries which could not possibly enter into such a competition. By these means the Irish cotton and silk industries dwindled and decayed no less than the woollen and glass manufactures. In other cases England tried to secure exclusively for herself Irish raw materials by forbidding Ireland to export such materials, or by discouraging the 308