I do not propose to furnish an exhaustive statement of the various laws passed by the English Parliament for the avowed purpose of destroying Irish trade and manufactures. I will deal only with the salient features of that system whose effects are, at the present day, sadly apparent.
Till the reign of Charles II., England placed no restriction on Irish commerce or manufactures. "Before the Restoration," says Lord North, in the British House of Commons, "they (the Irish) enjoyed every commercial advantage and benefit in common with England."[20] "Ireland," writes Hely Hutchinson, "was in possession of the English common law and of Magna Charta. The former secures the subject in the enjoyment of property of every kind, and by the latter _the liberties of all the ports of the Kingdom are established_."[21] "Our trade," says Mr. Gardiner in the Irish House of Commons, "was guaranteed by Magna Charta, our exports acknowledged by that venerable statute--no treaty was made in which we were not nominally or virtually included."[22] By one of the provisions of Poynings' Law, passed in 1495, all statutes hitherto in force in England were extended to Ireland. Before that enactment, however, Ireland is expressly mentioned in several English commercial statutes, in which clauses are inserted for the protection of her trade.[23] "At this period (1495)," says Hely Hutchinson, "the English commercial system and the Irish, so far as it depended on English statute law, was the same; and before this period, so far as it depended on the common law and Magna Charta, was also the same. From that time till the 15th of King Charles II., which takes in a period of 167 years, the commercial constitution of Ireland was as much favoured and protected as that of England."[24]
The first Navigation Act of 1660 put England and Ireland on exact terms of equality.[25] This community of rights was emphasised by an Act of the following year, which provided that foreign-built ships should not have the privilege of ships belonging to England and Ireland.[26] "But," as Mr. Froude observes, "the equality of privilege lasted only till the conclusion of the settlement and till the revenue had been assigned to the Crown."[27] In the amended Navigation Act of 1663, Ireland was left out. Lord North, on December 13, 1779, when Prime Minister of England, in introducing a bill to abrogate some of the restrictions on Irish trade, thus described the Act of 1663: "The first commercial restriction was laid on Ireland not directly, but by a side-wind and by deductive interpretation. When the Act (the Navigation Act of 1660) first passed there was a general governing clause for giving bonds to perform the conditions of the Act; but when the Act was amended in the 15 Car. II. the word 'Ireland' was omitted, whence a conclusion was drawn that the Acts of the two preceding Parliaments, 12 & 13 and 14 Car. II., were thereby repealed, though it was as clearly expressed in those Acts as it was possible for words to convey, that ships built in Ireland, navigated with the people thereof, were deemed British, and qualified to trade to and from British Plantations, and that ships built in Ireland and navigated with his Majesty's subjects of Ireland, were entitled to the same abatement and privileges to which imports and exports of goods in British-made ships were entitled by the book of rates. Ireland was, however, omitted in the manner he had already mentioned."[28]