Irish Industry Undermined.

In order to examine the matter fairly I propose to review the land question and the religious question, and to deal with the Irish as a people. I am not going to back into a very long story extending from century to century, because if I were to do that the mere relation of our original crimes toward Ireland would affright anybody who was examining the record. And it is impossible ever to recall yesterday. It is utterly impossible. I am glad there are some here—I hope they are Englishmen—who think this a fair matter for levity. I confess I do not. I confess to a state of dissatisfaction and discontent, to a state of misery and wrong, to a state of wretchedness and shame, in the circumstances of these people, brought out by the policy of extermination from year to year of its existence. I think that a country which has pursued that policy with the people of Ireland should at any rate not hesitate to grapple with the topic, and that more wrong has been done and more mischief through not thus exercising reparation and endeavoring to solve the question. (Applause.)

Ireland is purely an agricultural country, or nearly so; and this is from no special disposition of the Irish to occupy themselves solely with agricultural pursuits, but because England prevented Irishmen from following any trade requiring skilled artisanship at all. There is no trade, no measure of skilled handicraft to which the Irish have turned their hands that England has not legislated on, for the purpose of preventing it. You may tell me all these statutes are now repealed. That is perfectly true; but while you have repealed the statute, you cannot change the habits of life you have instilled into a people generation after generation. You check a particular kind of life and develop another particular kind of life, and it is impossible by the mere repeal of a statute to change the habits and thoughts of a nation and make them entirely different men by an enacting clause which you bring to bear upon them. (Applause.)

What was done in Ireland? When Irishmen fed cattle and sent them to England, the English farmers complained of the competition of Irish cattle, and they forbade their exportation from Irish shores. When the Irishmen killed their cattle at home and salted the meat, and the meat was exported from Ireland, that was entirely stopped. When they kept their live cattle at home and turned the hides into leather, then an edict went out from England restraining that: so this branch of trade was cut off. When they took to sheep-farming, the exportation of sheep into England was forbidden; and then they took to working their wool into cloth. You say that the Irish cannot be diligent, and cannot develop any great industries. I point you to the time, not so long ago in that land, when there were many woollen manufactories rising in Ireland; and I also point you to the statute which closed 20,000 manufactories, and turned the people adrift who were striving to earn an honest livelihood. I point you also to their silk and their cotton, their sugar, and their soap—everything except their linen was interfered with by the British Government. You will find that as fast as Irishmen turned their attention and ability to any one of the manufactures, there were immediately Acts of Parliament enacted preventing them from pursuing it. You tell me they are repealed. Yes, they are; but no sense of justice caused the repeal, nor did any feeling of humanity dictate it. I will tell you what did it.