Mr. Lecky thus accurately and distinctly describes the nature of the commercial arrangements under which Ireland obtained the limited free trade which she enjoyed, with some modifications, till the Union:--
"The fear of bankruptcy in Ireland; the non-importation agreements, which were beginning to tell upon English industries; the threatening aspect of an armed body, which already counted more than 40,000 men; the determined and unanimous attitude of the Irish Parliament; the prediction of the Lord-Lieutenant that all future military grants in Ireland depended upon his (Lord North's) course; the danger that England, in the midst of a great and disastrous war, should be left absolutely without a friend, all weighed upon his mind; and at the close of 1779, and in the beginning of 1780, a series of measures was carried in England which exceeded the utmost that a few years before the most sanguine Irishman could have either expected or demanded. The Acts which prohibited the Irish from exporting their woollen manufactures and their glass were wholly repealed, and the great trade of the colonies was freely thrown open to them. It was enacted that all goods that might be legally imported from the British settlements in America and Africa to Great Britain, may be in like manner imported directly from those settlements into Ireland, and that all goods which may be legally exported from Great Britain into those settlements may in like manner be exported from Ireland, on the sole condition that duties equal to those in British ports be imposed by the Irish Parliament on the goods and exports of Ireland. The Acts which prohibited carrying gold and silver into Ireland were repealed. The Irish were allowed to import foreign hops. They were allowed to become members of the Turkey Company, and to carry on a direct trade between Ireland and the Levant Sea.[134]
"Thus fell to the ground that great system of commercial restriction which began under Charles II., which under William III. acquired a crushing severity, and which had received several additional clauses in the succeeding reigns. The measures of Lord North, though obviously due in a great measure to intimidation and extreme necessity, were at least largely, wisely, and generously conceived, and they were the main sources of whatever material prosperity Ireland enjoyed during the next twenty years. The English Parliament had been accustomed to grant a small bounty--rising in the best years to £13,000--on the importation into England of the plainer kinds of Irish linen. After the immense concessions made to Irish trade, no one could have complained if this bounty had been withdrawn, but North determined to continue it. He showed that it had been of real use to the Irish linen manufacture, and he strongly maintained that the prosperity of Ireland must ultimately prove a blessing to England."[135]