The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-05
WHY IRISRMEN SHOULD VOTE FOR
PROTECTION
From he Chicdgo bureau.

VI all the anomalies OF American politics
the most strange is the blank stupidity with
which nine-tenths of all Irish voters in Ame-
RIGA vote for the party of British free trade.
If there is any man on earth the lessons of
whose national history ought to made him Il
protectionst it is the Irishman. He has
been exported to this country a pauper,
thing it was the interest of his own country
to get rid of, because the manufactures of
Ireland had been ruined by British free
trade. This fact is all there is of Irish suffer
ing and English oppression. This is the
cause. All the rest is consequence. And
vet nine Irishmen in ten have heretofore
voted for that policy of subserviency to Eng
land which has been steadily advocated and
practiced by the Democratic party, and which
would bring the same ruin on this country as
it has brought upon Ireland.
British free trade, relative to Ireland, means
AS it does relative to all other countries
ERghsImeB's profits. 1t is not principle of
political economy, but subterfuge of ma
ton of plunderers. Sometimes it assumes
the form of prohibiting trade between Ire
land and the colonies; sometimes of prohibit
ing associations from forming among Irish
men for manufacturing purposes sometimes
of removing Irish duties on manufactures so
as to let in English manufactures free;
and sometimes of removing the tariff
on breadstuffs, so as, after turning
Ireland over TO agriculture, to destroy its
agriculture. But in all cases there is one OBJ
iect, viz, to sell English goods in Irish
markets regardless of the effect it may have
to destroy first, Irish manufactures and ulti-
mately Irish agriculture.
AS early as 1858, the government of Will
liam and Mary, in reply to petition of Lon
don merchants, pledged itself to ''discoun-
tenance" the woollen manufactures of Ireland,
which were then rapidly advancing, 50 as to
compel Irish wool growers to send the raw
wool to England and buy back their cloths.
The export of wool to foreign countries be-
ing prohibited, the Irish wool grower was
required to sell his wool to English cloth
makers. Irish ships were excluded from all
benefit of the navigation laws, and excluded
from the fisheries. English ships and Eng
lish fishermen had free trade aud special pre-
negatives. But while England took the tur-
key she gave Irishmen the crow, every time.
Sugar could be imported only through Eng
land, and as no draw back was allowed on
its expectation to Ireland, the latter
was taxed for the support of the English
government while maintaining its
own. All trade with the colonies
must be done by English ships and through
English ports thus prohibiting Ireland from
building up either internal manufactures,
ports of entry, or commercial marine. To
induce them to confne themselves to raising
wool, hemp, and flax, for English looms,
these were admitted into England free of
duty.
During the American Revolution Irishmen
asserted the rights of their country to legis-
lative independence, and the embarrassments
of England were such that she complied for the
time with their demand. In 1888 du-
foreign manufacture with the avowed
purpose of employing the surplus
labor of the Irish people in converting their
corn, wool, and pork into cloth. Commerce
mades rapid strides. The linen, silk, and
book manufactures fourished-more books
being published in Dublin by single house
than are now used by the whole population
of Ireland. With 1901, however, the Eng
lish copyright laws were extended to Ireland,
and with free trade in English books, Ireland
began to cease to either make buy, or read
books. Under the act of Union the almost
prohibitory duties on English calicoes and
musins were to continue until 1908; those on
English woollens were to last until 1921;
those on cotton yarn until 1910; and by an
extension of the English patent laws over
Ireland prohibition on the erection of new
forms of machinery was imposed unless tri-
butte were paid to their English inventors,
thus accompanying free trade in commodities
by an embargo on the ideas and inventions
which. would promote their production.
AS a sample of the results, Dublin, which,
in 1900, had ninety-one woollen manufacto-
rle6, In 1910, Wnen, according TO the natural
law of increase, it ought to have two hundred
and fifty, only had twelve. The hands en-
ployed, instead of increasing from four thou
sand nine hundred and eighteen in 1900, to
ten thousand, or twice as many, in the forty
years, were reduced to six hundred and two.
The wool-combers and carpet manufacturers
had nearly disappeared. The same results had
ensued in Cork, Kilkenny, and Wicklow.
Branches of manufactures in which the en-
ployes were counted by thousands numbered
only few scores
At first the whole population being driven
into agriculture, land became the only means
of living, and rose to rents of six, eight, and
ten pounds per acre. Enormous rents, low
wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by
rapacious and indolent proprietors to mono
policing land jobbers to be re-let by interme-
diate oppressors, for five times their value,
among the wretched starvers on potatoes and
water" This led to instructions, coercion
acts, and speedily to famine, and the exporta-
tion of the people as a surplus commodity.
Manufactures did not fail in Ireland for
want of coal, for that was abundant, both an
thracite and bituminous; nor for want of
capital, for capital was being deprecated and
wasted every year equal to that then invested
in all the cotton and woollen machinery in
England nor for want of industry, for with
proper returns for his labor the Irish laborer
is as vigorous and industrious as any in the
world, and has more power than the English,
French, or Belgian. Ii was not for want
of iron, for Ireland had all the materials
for making it in the greatest pro-
fusion. 1t was not from excess
of population, for the population was far less
dense than in Belgium; and so far from
kha oo;Il e Al.