With that victory ended the second Hundred Years’ War of England with France, which began with the War of the Spanish Succession (1704) under Marlborough (S508).  At the outset the object of that war was, first, to humble the power of Louis XIV that threatened the independence of England; and, secondly, to protect those American colonies which later separated fromthe mother country and became, partly through French help, the republic of the United States.

560.  Increase of the National Debt; Taxation.

Owing to these hundred years and more of war (S559) the National Debt of GReat Britain and Ireland (S503), which in 1688 was much less than a million of pounds, had now reached the enormous amount of over nine hundred millions (or $4,500,000,000), bearing yearly interest at the rate of more than $160,000,000.[1] So great had been the strain on the finances of the country, that the Bank of England (S503) suspended payment, and many heavy failures occurred.  In addition to this, a succession of bad harvests sent up the price of wheat to such a point that at one time an ordinary-sized loaf of bread cost the farm laborer more than half a day’s wages.

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, under “National Debt.”

Taxes had gone on increasing until it seemed as though the people could no longer endure the burden.  As Sydney Smith declared, with entire truth, there were duties on everything.  They began, he said, in childhood, with “the boy’s taxed top”; they followed to old age, until at last “the dying Englishman, pouring his taxed medicine into a taxed spoon, flung himself back on a taxed bed, and died in the arms of an apothecary who had paid a tax of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death."[1]

[1] Sydney Smith’s Essays, “Review of Seybert’s Annals of the United
    States.”

561.  The Irish Parliament; the Irish Rebellion (1798).

For a century after the battle of the Boyne (S500) Ireland can hardly be said to have had a history.  The iron hand of English despotism had crushed the spirit out of the inhabitants, and they suffered in silence.  During the first part of the eighteenth century the destitution of the people was so great that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery of the government’s neglect, published what he called his “Modest Proposal.”  He suggested that the misery of the half-starved peasants might be relieved by allowing them to eat their own children or else sell them to the butchers.

But a new attempt was now made to improve the political condition of the wretched country.  That distinguished statesman, Edmund Burke (S550), had already tried to secure a fair measure of commercial liberty for the island, but without success.  Since the reign of Henry VII the so-called “free Parliament” of Ireland had been bound hand and foot by Poynings’s Act (S329, note 1).  The eminent Protestant Irish orator, Henry Grattan, now urged the repeal of that law with all his impassioned eloquence.  He was seconded in his efforts by the powerful influence of Fox in the English House of Commons.  Finally, the obnoxious act was repealed (1782), and a, so-called, independent Irish Parliament, to which Grattan was elected, met in Dublin.