In 1627 Charles Issued A
Proclamation Respecting Ireland, From Which We Learn That The Principal
Foreign Trade Of Ireland Was
To Spain and Portugal, and consisted in fish,
butter, skins, wool, rugs, blankets, wax, cattle, and horses; pipe staves,
and
Corn; timber fit for ship-building, as well as pipe staves, seem at
this period to have formed most extensive and valuable articles of export
from Ireland. In the middle of this century, Irish linen yarn was used in
considerable quantities in the Manchester manufactures, as we have already
noticed. The importation into England of fat cattle from Ireland seems to
have been considerable, and to have been regarded as so prejudicial to the
pasture farmers of the former country, that in 1666 a law was passed laying
a heavy duty on their importation. This statute proving ineffectual,
another was passed in 1663, enacting the forfeiture of all great cattle,
sheep, swine, and also beef, pork, or bacon, imported from Ireland. Sir W.
Petty remarks, that before this law was passed, three-fourths of the trade
of Ireland was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. Sir
Jonah Child, in his Discourse on Trade, describes the state of Ireland as
having been much improved by the soldiers of the Commonwealth settling
there; through their own industry, and that which they infused into the
natives, he adds, that Ireland was able to supply foreign markets, as well
as our plantations in America, with beef, pork, hides, tallow, bread, beer,
wood, and corn, at a cheaper rate than England could afford to do. Though
this country, as we have seen, exported linen goods at a very early period,
yet this manufacture cannot be regarded as the staple one of Ireland, or as
having contributed very much to her foreign commerce, till it flourished
among the Scotch colonists in Ulster towards the middle of the seventeenth
century. As soon as they entered on it with spirit, linen yarn was no
longer exported to Manchester and other parts of England, but manufactured
into cloth in Ireland, and in that state it formed the chief article of its
commerce. The woollen manufactures of Ireland, which were always viewed
with jealousy by England, and were checked in every possible manner,
gradually gave way to the restraints laid on them, and to the rising and
unchecked linen manufacture, and of course ceased to enter into the
exports.
The commerce of Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was
kept low, by ignorance and want of industry, by the disturbed state of the
country, by disputes between the king and nobility, and, till the union of
the crowns, by wars with England. The commerce of Ireland had still greater
difficulties to struggle with; among which may be mentioned the ignorant
oppression of the English government in every thing that related to its
manufactures or trade.
The commerce of France, during the sixteenth century, presents few
particulars worthy of notice; that, which was carried on between it and
England, was principally confined to the exportation of wines, fruit, silk
and linen, from France; and woollen goods, and tin and lead, from England.
There seems to have been a great exchange between the woollens of England
and the linens of Bretagne.
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