Taken from The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century (Chapter V.) by Edgar Sanderson (1898)
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The legislation against Irish industries had its origin in the narrow and selfish spirit of commercial monopoly in England which had devised the Navigation Acts against the carrying trade of the Dutch, and was displayed by her in commercial dealings with her "plantations" and colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Irish manufactures and trade were openly suppressed and extirpated. In the reign of Charles the Second, Irish land was chiefly used for pasture, and Irish wealth was derived from the export of cattle, meat, butter and cheese to western English ports. The English landowners complained, and laws of 1665 and 1680 prohibited the importation of all this Irish produce into England. Her trade with the colonies was ruined by legislation which forbade exports thither save in English ships, or imports thence except with first unlading in English harbours.
When the Irish landowners were prevented from exporting their cattle to England, they raised large flocks of sheep and began a manufacture in wool. English jealousy was again aroused, and in 1699 Irish woollens were excluded from the English and all foreign markets. Thousands of workmen left Ulster for America and the Continent, and the country was once more reduced to penury, when the people were thrown for sustenance entirely upon the land. The linens of Ireland, and some manufactures in cotton, were also shut out from the English markets by heavy duties. The trade in beer and malt was heavily taxed, and, under George the Second, severe restrictions were laid on Irish manufactures in glass, paper, velvet, hats, and other articles. The breaking up of land from pasture into arable was restricted by legislation, and disastrous famines arose from time to time in the failure to grow sufficient corn.
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From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
A touching story for the genuine booklover, written by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St John Featherstonehaugh.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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