Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/166

and December.^[1] Rents, however, continued to fall, and nothing less would then satisfy the English landed interest than the total prohibition of the import into England of Irish cattle, Irish wool, and Irish meat.^[2] A fatal blow was thereby struck, not only at the branch of industry most suitable to the Irish soil and climate, but also at the Irish carrying trade into England. There was a strong opposition to the Bill both in Parliament and in the Privy Council, but the majority were of opinion that 'in a point evidently for the benefit and advantage of England, Ireland ought not to be put into the scale, because it would be some inconvenience there,' and that 'some noblemen of that kingdom lived in a higher garb and made greater expenses than the noblemen of England; and that if something was not done to prevent it, the Duke of Ormonde would have a greater revenue than the Earl of Northumberland.'^[3] It was true that it could be shown that many English counties—those which bought their cattle in Ireland to fat them for the English market—would suffer greatly by the projected legislation, and that the King and a majority of the Peers were opposed to the Bill. But the House of Commons, where the landowners held the preponderating power, insisted on the Bill, and made it a condition of voting supplies. Ireland was also excluded from the advantages of the Navigation Act, and her independent trade with New England was thereby destroyed. Against these restrictions, so injurious not to trade only but to the Protestant interest also, largely composed as that interest was of the commercial and trading classes, Sir William strongly exerted himself. He drew up a paper of 'Observations upon the trade in Irish cattle,' in which he pointed out that the value of the Irish cattle imported into England had been too small to have been the cause of the fall in the value of English land. 'The owners of breeding lands' (in England), he said, 'since the prohibition, have gotten above ten shillings more for their cattle per head than before it, which the owners of the feeding lands (in Ireland) have lost. Moreover, the mariners of

1. 15 Charles II. c. 7 (English Statutes).
2. Life of Clarendon, p. 959 et seq.
3. Ibid. p. 967.