to impeach the right of the
Parliament of Great Britain to make laws for the trade of Ireland: I
only speak of what laws it is right for Parliament to make.

It is nothing to an oppressed people, to say that in part they are
protected at our charge. The military force which shall be kept up in
order to cramp the natural faculties of a people, and to prevent their
arrival to their utmost prosperity, is the instrument of their
servitude, not the means of their protection. To protect men is to
forward, and not to restrain, their improvement. Else, what is it more
than to avow to them, and to the world, that you guard them from others
only to make them a prey to yourself? This fundamental nature of
protection does not belong to free, but to all governments, and is as
valid in Turkey as in Great Britain. No government ought to own that it
exists for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people, or that
there is such a principle involved in its policy.

Under the impression of these sentiments, (and not as wanting every
attention to my constituents which affection and gratitude could
inspire,) I voted for these bills which give you so much trouble. I
voted for them, not as doing complete justice to Ireland, but as being
something less unjust than the general prohibition which has hitherto
prevailed. I hear some discourse as if, in one or two paltry duties on
materials, Ireland had a preference, and that those who set themselves
against this act of scanty justice assert that they are only contending
for an _equality_. What equality? Do they forget that the whole woollen
manufacture of Ireland, the most extensive and profitable of any, and
the natural staple of that kingdom, has been in a manner so destroyed by
restrictive laws of ours, and (at our persuasion, and on our promises)
by restrictive laws of _their own_, that in a few years, it is probable,
they will not be able to wear a coat of their own fabric? Is this
equality? Do gentlemen forget that the understood faith upon which they
were persuaded to such an unnatural act has not been kept,--but a
linen-manufacture has been set up, and highly encouraged, against them?
Is this equality? Do they forget the state of the trade of Ireland in
beer, so great an article of consumption, and which now stands in so
mischievous a position with regard to their revenue, their manufacture,
and their agriculture? Do they find any equality in all this? Yet, if
the least step is t