northern nations, from which we had in exchange, timber, iron, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, and hard dollars.  At the time the current money of Ireland was foreign silver, a man could hardly receive 100l., without finding the coin of all the northern powers, and every prince of the empire among it.  This money was returned into England for fine cloths, silks, &c. for our own wear, for rents, for coals, for hardware, and all other English manufactures, and, in a great measure, supplied the London merchants with foreign silver for exportation.

The repeated clamours of the English weavers produced this act, so destructive to themselves and us.  They looked with envious eyes upon our prosperity, and complained of being undersold by us in those commodities, which they themselves did not deal in.  At their instances the act was passed, and we lost our profitable 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.