These efforts of the Irish Parliament, though of little practical effect, demonstrate their keen appreciation of the sufferings around them and their sympathy with the wants and wishes of their people, who were crushed by a system which Mr. Pitt has characterised as one "of cruel and abominable restraint."[80]
Speaking in the English House of Commons in 1785, that statesman bade members "recollect that from the Revolution to a period within the memory of every man who heard him, indeed until these very few years, the system had been that of debarring Ireland from the enjoyment and use of her own resources, to make that kingdom completely subservient to the interests and opulence of this country, without suffering her to share in the bounties of nature, in the industries of her citizens, or making them contribute to the general interests and strength of the empire."[81]
"No country," says Mr. Lecky, "ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland, for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. No serious resistance of any kind was attempted. The nation was as passive as clay in the hands of the potter, and it is a circumstance of peculiar aggravation that a large part of the legislation I have recounted was a distinct violation of a solemn treaty.[82] The commercial legislation which ruined Irish industry, the confiscation of Irish land which demoralised and impoverished the nation, were all directly due to the English Government, and the English Parliament."[83]
"If," says Mr. Froude, "the high persons at the head of the great British Empire had deliberately considered by what means they could condemn Ireland to remain the scandal of their rule, they could have chosen no measures better suited to their end than those which they pursued unrelentingly through three-quarters of a century."[84]
[64] Rapin, xvii., p. 417. The date of this letter is 16th of July, 1698. The matter was so urgent that William III. wrote two letters. See "English in Ireland," i. 297.
[65] "English in Ireland," vol. i., p. 297.
[68] "English in Ireland," vol. i., p. 439.
[69] The charge of indolence which Mr. Froude has here preferred against the Irish peasantry has frequently been refuted. The accusation is an old one. Speaking in the Irish House of Commons in 1784, the Right Hon. Luke Gardiner thus repelled it:--"Those who render our people idle are the first to ridicule them for that idleness, and to ridicule them without a cause. National characteristics are always unjust, as there never was a country that has not produced both good and bad." "They are general assertions, as false as they are illiberal. Irishmen have shown spirit and genius in whatever they have undertaken." "I call upon gentlemen to specify one instance where the people were indolent when the laws of their country protected them in their endeavours." ("Irish Debates," iii., p. 127.) "It is a cant in England," says Mr. O'Connell, "that they (the Irish) are an idle people, but how can that be said when they are to be found seeking employment through every part of the world? They are to be found making roads in Scotland and digging canals in the poisonous marshes of New Orleans." ("Discussion in Dublin Corporation on Repeal of the Union," in 1843, p. 58) The _Times_ of the 26th of June, 1845, in an article to which I will refer hereafter, says "The Irishman is disposed to work."