very good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.  There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition would have been changed.  But English jealousy again interposed.  By an Act of crushing and unprecedented severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely forbidden.

“The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception.  The main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated.  A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution.  Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain.  The western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly depopulated.  Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[33]

Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.

“The Relief Bill of ’93 naturally suggests a consideration of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause.  It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended.  The arguments against this view are, I believe, overwhelming.  The injustice of the disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it.  In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a small minority.  Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union.  Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union.  At a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise.  By this last measure they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily