e
it, but was at that time determined to maintain the exclusion of the
catholics from the franchise. The Irish administration was opposed to a
change of system, and the Duke of Rutland, the viceroy, a young man of
great ability, held that the state of the country would render it
dangerous. The defeat of Flood's last attempt at reform, in 1785, left
the Irish parliament as before without "the smallest resemblance to
representation".[192]

In face of the threatened interference in politics of an armed force, of
discontent and disloyalty, and foreseeing difficulties in the future
between the independent Irish parliament and the imperial government,
Rutland prophesied in 1784 that "without an union Ireland would not be
connected with Great Britain in twenty years longer".[193] Pitt hoped to
pacify discontent by benefiting Irish trade, and to unite the two
countries by a community of interest. His plan, to which he attached
more importance than to Irish reform, though commercial in character,
was based on a lofty political conception; it was designed to promote
"the prosperity of the empire at large".[194] North's concessions to
Ireland in 1779 and the subsequent establishment of Irish legislative
independence left both countries at liberty to regulate each its own
trade. Ireland admitted English goods free or at low duties; and England
shut out most Irish manufactures, though admitting linen, the
manufacture of which was encouraged by a bounty, and, for her own
convenience, woollen yarn free of duty. Ireland, too, though enabled to
trade directly with the English colonies, could neither send their
products to England nor buy them from England. Pitt designed to
establish perpetual free trade between England and Ireland, and as
Ireland would be the gainer by the change, he proposed that in return
she should contribute a fixed sum to the naval defence of the empire.
Rutland, who saw that sending money to England would be violently
opposed, suggested that the contribution should be spent on a portion of
the navy to be kept on the Irish coasts. In words which it is well to
remember, Pitt pointed out that "there can be but one navy for the
empire at large, and it must be administered by the executive in this
country".[195] The resolutions he sent over to be presented to the Irish
parliament provided that the contribution should come from the surplus
which the grant of free trade would create in the hereditary revenue of
the crow