^{page 2 note 1} 10 and II William III, c. 10. The act did not prohibit exports of frieze of declining importance) or of woollens generally to England (where the tariff was already effectively prohibitive).

^{page 2 note 2} The fact that it was the controversy over the Irish woollen industry leading up to the act of 1699 that gave birth to Molyneux's book The case ofIreland stated (1698) helped to keep the measure fresh in Irish memories because of its association with thework which underlay Irish constitutional thinking of the eighteenth century.

^{page 2 note 3} The cattle acts stemmed from England's right to regulate her imports and the navigation acts from her right to regulatetrade with her colonies. Although they did not therefore directly raise the issue of the constitutional rights of the English parliament over die Irish, they of course implied the duty of the Irish executive to discountenance actions which would violate them. After the enactment of the cattle acts some evasion of them for a while enjoyed a measure of tolerance on the part of the Irish executive (O'Donovan, J., Economic history of livestock in Ireland (Cork, 1940), p. 60). There is also evidence of some official laxit in the observance of the navigation acts in Ireland during the Restorationperiod.Google Scholar

^{page 3 note 1} 6 Geo. I, c. 5.

^{page 3 note 2} It is worth noting that King's views were much more extreme in the 1720s than they had been twenty years previously. See for an expression of his views in the 1720s a letter from 1723 in King, C. S., A great archbishop of Dublin, William King, D.D., 1650–1729 (London, 1906), p. 242.Google Scholar

^{page 3 note 3} This new interpretation has been accepted by modern Irish historians. They were also powerfully influenced by the Rev. William, Cunningham's ‘The repression of the woollen manufacture in Ireland’, English historical review, 1 (1886).Google Scholar While this article, in some respects remarkably judicious for the time, sought to minimize the injustice and the effect of the woollen act at the time of its passing, Cunningham's own conclusion that ‘there was little if any positive injury done to the native Irish, though a hindrance was imposed ontheir subsequent progress’ (p. 293) seemed to imply that the long-term consequences of the act were more serious and simply reinforced from anindependent point of view the polemical interpretation which has developedin Ireland of the act's significance. Among more modern historians, Sir George Clark, who doubted that the act had the significance attributed to it {The later Stuarts, 1660–1714, 2nd ed. (1955), pp.317–19)Google Scholar and Johnston, J., who while accepting the established view about the crippling effects of English commercial policy saw that depression did not immediately follow from the passingof the act (‘Commercial restriction and monetary deflation in eighteenth-century Ireland’ Hermathena, 53 (1939)), are alone in questioning the established version of the act's consequences.Google ScholarRichard Pares also accepted Clark's view in ‘The economic factors in the history of the empire’ (reprinted in Essays in economic history, ed. E. M. Cams-Wilson, i. p. 419n).Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 1} King, C. S., op. cit., p. 35n.;Google ScholarKearney, H. F., ‘The political background to English mercantilism, 1695–1700’, Economic history review, 2nd series, 11 (1959) PP. 492–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 4 note 2} Kearney, , loc. cit., p. 496.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 3} John, Cary, Some considerations relating to the carrying on the linnen manufacture in the kingdom of Ireland by ajoint-stock (London, 1704), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar Bishop King of Deny (later archbishop ofDublin) himself viewed the act simply as one of several causes contributing to the depressed condition of Ireland in the early eighteenth century (letter by King in March 1702 quoted in Johnston, loc. cit., pp. 86–87).Google Scholar

^{page 5 note 1} Notably the British statutes of 1710 prohibiting the import of hops to Ireland from any country other than Great Britain (9 Anne, c. 12), 1746 prohibiting the export of Irish glass (19 Geo. II, c. 12). There are a number of other instances, although in many cases their significance is technical rather than general. The view that British policy was responsible for Irish economic difficulties reached its extreme presentation in Sir James Caldwell's An enquiry how far the restrictions laid upon the trade of Ireland by British acts of parliament are beneficial or disadvantageous to the British dominions in general (Dublin, 1779), and J. Hely Hutchinson's Commercial restraints of Ireland considered (Dublin, 1779).

^{page 5 note 2} Connell, K. H., The population of Ireland, 1750–1845 (Oxford, 1950).Google Scholar

^{page 5 note 3} Lynch, P. and Vaizey, J., Guinness's brewery in the Irish economy, 1759–1776 (Cambridge, 1960).Google Scholar

^{page 6 note 1} Sigerson, G., Lastindependent parliament of Ireland (Dublin, 1918);Google ScholarChart, D.A., Economic history of Ireland (Dublin, 1920);Google ScholarBurke, J. F., Outlines of the industrial history of Ireland (Dublin, 1920);Google ScholarRiordan, E. J., Modern Irish trade and industry (London, 1920);Google ScholarO'Brien, G., Economic history of Ireland, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1918, 1919; London, 1921). Chart, a genuine historianGoogle Scholar detached from much of the emotional feeling of the time, himself wrote hiswork ‘in view of the daily increasing importance of the subject’ (Preface, p. vii), and was influenced by contemporary attitudes towardsthe interpretation of Irish economic history in the choice of his premises, which though less extremely stated are not essentially different from those of other writers.

^{page 6 note 2} Green's, Industrial archaeology of county Down (Belfast, 1963) should also be noted as the introduction of a new dimension in the study of Irish economic history.Google Scholar

^{page 6 note 3} A statement in Murray's, A. E.History of the commercial and financial relations between England and Ireland (London, 1903), p. 50,Google Scholar that ‘for the next three-quarters of a century the history of Ireland was to be little more than a history of religious persecution, political corruption and commercial and industrial restrictions’ may be regarded not unfairly as representative of the attitudes which characterized the approach to Irish economic and general history at this time. In recent writing much of the old attitude has been abandoned, and the conflict between the accepted picture of the general history of Ireland and its realities, less harsh and less extreme, brought out. For a very important revision of opinion on the penal laws and their impact, see Wall, M., ’, Irish historical studies, 11, no. 42 (1958);Google Scholar and The Penal laws, 1691–1760 (Dublin Historical Association, 1961).Google Scholar For a fresh approach in the political field to tenant-landlord relations, see Whyte, J. H., ’, English historical review, 80 (10 1965).Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 1} O'Brien, , Economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (Dublin, 1918), p. 223.Google ScholarMurray's view is no less unrealistic: ‘for fifty years after the Irish and English woollen acts of 1698 and 1699 the poverty of Ireland was extreme’ {op. cit., p. 70).Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 2} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 3} O'Brien, in ‘Historical introduction’ to Riordan, E. J., Modern Irish trade and industry (London, 1920), p. 7.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 4} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 26.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 5} The view that banking failures were endemic was reinforced by the description of the eighteenth-century background in Hall's, History of the Bank of Ireland (Dublin and Oxford, 1949).Google Scholar The view has been repeated in recent worksby Robinson, H. W., A history of accountants in Ireland (Dublin, 1964), pp. 42, 60;Google Scholar and Milne, K., A history of the Royal Bank of Ireland Limited (Dublin, 1964), pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

^{page 9 note 1} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 24.Google Scholar

^{page 9 note 2} O'Brien, in Riordan, , op. cit., p. 50.It was also Gill's view in theGoogle ScholarRise of the Irish linen industry (Oxford, 1925), pp. 23–27, that tenant right was a very important factor in accounting for the localization of the industry in Ulster. The existence and definition of tenant right in the eighteenth century are however matters about which little is known. References to it for this period are based on the assumption that what existed in the nineteenth century also existed in the previous century. What is sometimes described as tenant right by later writers referring to this period was simply the right of a tenant to sell his interest in a lease. But this practice was country-wide and not confined to Ulster. It is of course possible that because emigration from the north was more frequent than from the rest of the country in this period theselling of a tenant's interest in a lease was more common there than elsewhere and that as a result more clearly defined practices and rules grew around it. But this would itself make necessary a new attitude towards the existence and role of tenant right. Emigration, for instance, would not have been a factor which was as historians have maintained financed in part by the sale of tenant right so much as a factor which brought tenant right into existence. On the Abercorn estates ‘tenant right’ simply meant the rights as tenant acquired by the purchase of the interest of a lease (P.R.O., Belfast, Calendar of Abercorn Papers). Novel only was the fact that tenants could apparently bequeath or leave their interest in the remaining years of a lease to their families.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 1} Connell, , op. cit., p. 159.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 2} This has been the argument of Irish writers dealing with the eighteenth century. The argument is sometimes expressed somewhat differently in the form of increased competition for employment outlets, said to have been diminished by the swing from tillage (e.g. O'Brien, in Riordan, , op. cit., PP.8–9).Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 3} O'Brien, , Economic history of Ireland from the union to the famine (London, 1921), p. 109.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 4} Connell, , op. cit., pp. 100, 244.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 5} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 12.Google Scholar

^{page 11 note 1} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

^{page 11 note 2} This is broadly the argument of Connell's standard work on the subject.

^{page 12 note 1} O'Brien, in Riordan, , op. cit., pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

^{page 12 note 2} La Force, J. Clayburn, Jr., The development of the Spanish textile industry, 1750–1800 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), pp. 31, 70, 73, 74–75 n. There is no evidence of emigration by Irish weavers after the 1699 act to France, said by Irish writers to have received thousands. There is only isolated evidence of the existence of a few Irish entrepreneurs in French textiles and at a later stage of the century.Google Scholar

^{page 13 note 1} Cullen, L. M., ‘The value of contemporary printed sources for Irish economic history in the eighteenth century’, Irish historical studies, 14, no. 54 (09 1964), pp.152–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 14 note 1} e.g. Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 24.Google Scholar

^{page 15 note 1} Lecky, W. E. H., History of Ireland in the eighteenth century, 1 (London, 1896), pp.217, 246.Google ScholarMurray has the same view {op. cit., p. 141). The concept of the Irish land system underlying Gill's Rise of the Irish linen industry is similar. To Gill ‘by far the commonest lease in Ireland during the eighteenth century was for one year, with six months’ grace’, and the tenants kept themselves and their families ‘at the subsistence level, with only so much surplus as would just satisfy the most urgent claims of the rent-agent‘ {op. cit., p. 24).Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 1} Lecky, , op. cit., p. 222; O'Brien, , Economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century, p. 97.Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 2} Connell, , op. cit., p. 244.Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 3} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 12.Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 4} Digest of the Devon Commission (Dublin, 1847), p. 234,Google Scholar quoted in O'Brien, , Economic history of Ireland from the union to the famine (London, p. 105.Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 5} O'Brien, , for instance, regarded the linen industry as one conducted by cottiers {Economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century, p. 97). Yet the land-holding weavers of the eighteenth century were neither in a legal nor economic sense of cottier status. Racial hatred in landlord-tenant relations, said to be marked in Iris rural parts, does not appear to have been a pronounced feature of the eighteenth century so much as a product of tensions created as a result of the growth of a cottier population (which landlords themselves viewed with unease and frequently alarm) and of the fears engendered by the ';98 rebellion. Even in the nineteenth century, as Whyte has pointed out (loc. cit.), the ‘tenants’ were often well-disposed towards a landlord, if he conformed to their concept of a good landlord, and pressures or intimidation were consequently not necessary to influence their voting in election.Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 6} Young, for instance, in his Tour frequentlycommented on the sharp rise in preceding decades in the number of cottiers. This was not a specifically Irish phenomenon. It was also happening in other countries where population was rising rapidly and where outlets off the land were deficient (Slicher Van Bath, B. H., The agrarian history of Western Europe (London, 1963), pp. 314-17).Google Scholar The problem of the agricultural areas of the south of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centurieswas a similar case in many respects and relief was in no small measure associated with the decline in the agricultural population from the mid-nineteenth century. The difference in Ireland was mainly that this Europe-wide phenomenon proceeded much farther than elsewhere. For instance on the already overcrowded Glanerought estate in Co. Kerry, the number of holdings had increased between 1836 and 1846 from 755 to 1,038, not including squatters (Marquis of Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-Fitzmaurices (London, 1937), pp. 127–28).Google Scholar A rise of these proportions in the demand for land was accompanied by a progressive worsening in the conditions of tenure, and tenures of a year's duration or less, formerly relatively few, became very common. In 1832‐34 on the Inchiquin estates in Clare and Limerick 50 per cent of tenants had yearly tenancies, and 15 per cent held their land at will (Ainsworth, J. (ed.), The Inchiquin manuscripts (Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1961), p. 544).Google Scholar

^{page 17 note 1} Henry, Maxwell, Reasons offered for erecting a bank in Ireland in a letter to Hercules Rowley Esq (Dublin, 1721), p. 47;Google ScholarJonathan, Swift, The Drapier's letters to the people of Ireland, ed.Davis, H. (Oxford, 1935), p. 156;Google ScholarFaulkner's Dublin Journal, 7th/ioth April, 1753.Google Scholar

^{page 17 note 2} Young, A., Tour in Ireland (London, 1780), pt. 2, p. 8.Google Scholar

^{page 18 note 1} O'Brien, , for instance, stated baldly that the ten or fifteen years following 1728 were years of almost continuous shortage (Economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century, p. 104).Google Scholar

^{page 18 note 2} A detailed study of weather conditions, their effect on harvest yields, and the state of the international market for grain would be illuminating. Bad Irish harvests in 1739, 1740 and 1741 and again in 1744 and 1745 contrasted with bumper ones in 1742 and 1743. The phenomenal rise in imports of grain and flour in 1745/46, a period in which disastrous failure in Ireland coincided with less deficient harvests elsewhere, is an indication of the normally large proportions of the Irish harvest. The failures of 1739 and 174 were no more complete than in 1744. But in the former two years deficiency outside Ireland was acute also; in the latter year the international food balance was more favourable. As a result in comparison to needs in Ireland the rise in imports in 1740 and 1741 was modest; in 1745/46 on the other hand imports were far and away the largest of the century. Famine was inevitable in 1740 and 1741, but failure of at least equal proportions in 1744 (with a severely deficitary harvest in 1745 also) did not result in a repetitionof the same experience.

^{page 18 note 3} See Cullen, L. M., loc. cit., p. 153.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 1} Drake, M., ‘The Irish demographic crisis of 1740‐41’, paper read to the Seventh Irish Conference of Historians, June, 1965.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 2} Connell, , op. cit., p. 93; Murray, op. cit., p. 135.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 3} According to figures before a House of Lords committee, the proportion was two fifths (Journal of the Irish House of Lords, 4, p. 101).Google Scholar However, the calculation of imports of wheat and flour to Dublin was inflated by a grossly erroneous figurefor imports in the year ended March 1755. The imports of wheat and flour in that year were 287,558 barrels. But according to the official returns of trade in corn and flour, the quantities imported to Dublin in that year were 55,652 cwt flour and 51,862 quarters wheat (Journal of the Irish House of Commons, ix, App., cclxix). Converting both quantities into barrels on the basis apparently employed by the Lords committee (one quarter wheat equals two barrels, three cwt flour the equivalent before milling of two barrels wheat), the total import of wheat and flour amounts to 140,832 barrels, or somewhat less than half the figure calculate by or given to the committee.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 4} Annual average imports of wheat, oats, barley and malt and flour to Ireland between 1760 and 1769 were 1,768,856 stone (Connell, op. cit., p. 269, Table E). The inland carriage of grain, meal and flour to Dublin alone averaged 1,690,408 stone between 1762 and 1769 (Journal of the Irish House of Commons, viii, App., passim). This is all the more impressive on account of particularly severe harvest failure in 1766 which sharply reduced the inland carriage of grain and flour to Dublin in the year ended March 1767 and heavily inflated imports in the same year.Google Scholar

^{page 20 note 1} Lynch, and Vaizey, , op. cit., p. 25.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 1} Drake, M., ‘Marriage and population growth in Ireland, 1750‐1845’, Economic history review, 2nd series, 16, no. 2 (11 1963).Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 2} Connell, , op. cit.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 3} Drake, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 4} Journal of the Irish House of Commons, ix, App. cccxxii, cccxxv.Google Scholar