fitable northern trade. Have they
got it? No, surely, you have found they have ever since declined in the
trade they so happily possessed; you shall find (if I am rightly
informed) towns without one loom in them, which subsisted entirely upon
the woollen manufactory before the passing of this unhappy bill; and I
will try if I can give the true reasons for the decay of their trade,
and our calamities.

Three parts in four of the inhabitants of that district of the town
where I dwell were English manufacturers, whom either misfortunes in
trade, little petty debts, contracted through idleness, or the pressures
of a numerous family, had driven into our cheap country: These were
employed in working up our coarse wool, while the finest was sent into
England. Several of these had taken the children of the native Irish
apprentices to them, who being humbled by the forfeiture of upward of
three millions by the Revolution, were obliged to stoop to a mechanic
industry. Upon the passing of this bill, we were obliged to dismiss
thousands of these people from our service. Those who had settled their
affairs returned home, and overstocked England with workmen; those whose
debts were unsatisfied went to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where
they met with good encouragement, whereby the natives, having got a firm
footing in the trade, being acute fellows, soon became as good workmen
as any we have, and supply the foreign manufactories with a constant
recruit of artisans; our island lying much more under pasture than any
in Europe. The foreigners (notwithstanding all the restrictions the
English Parliament has bound us up with) are furnished with the greatest
quantity of our choicest wool. I need not tell you, sir, that a
custom-house oath is held as little sacred here as in England, or that
it is common for masters of vessels to swear themselves bound for one of
the English wool ports, and unload in France or Spain. By this means the
trade in those parts is, in a great measure, destroyed, and we were
obliged to try our hands at finer works, having only our home
consumption to depend upon; and, I can assure you, we have, in several
kinds of narrow goods, even exceeded the English, and I believe we
shall, in a few years more, be able to equal them in broad cloths; but
this you may depend upon, that scarce the tenth part of English goods
are now imported, of what used to be before the famous act.

The only manufactured wares we are al