was almost constantly at war, or feverishly preparing for war.
Simultaneously came the unprecedented increase of urban industry,
following on the invention of the steam-engine and spinning machinery.
The result was an enormous and growing demand for corn, beef, and pork,
sailcloth, stores of all kinds for our armies and fleets, a demand which
England, owing to the growth of her town population and the consequent
growth of the home demand, was unable adequately to meet.
Ireland reaped the benefit. As a largely agricultural country, she was
as yet little influenced by the discoveries of Watt, of Hargreaves, of
Arkwright, or of Crompton. But her long-rested soil could produce in
apparently unlimited quantities those very products of which the British
forces stood most in need. The fleets were victualled and fitted out at
Cork, and they carried thence a constant stream of supplies of all sorts
for our armies in the field. Indeed, so keen was the demand that it was
soon discovered that not only our own troops, but those of the enemy,
were receiving Irish supplies, and smugglers on the south and west
coasts reaped a rich harvest.
The result was obvious. Cattle graziers and middlemen made enormous
profits, rents were doubled and trebled. Dublin, Cork, Waterford,
Limerick and Belfast flourished exceedingly on war prices and war
profits. But there is no evidence that the mass of the people in their
degraded and debased condition shared to any extent in this prosperity.
It was at this very period that Arthur O'Connor spoke of them as "the
worst clad, the worst fed, the worst housed people in Europe."
Whiteboyism, outrage and lawlessness spread over the face of the
country, and, as Lord Clare reminded Parliament, "session after session
have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty
to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people." It has
been made a charge against the Union that during some disturbed periods
of the nineteenth century the United Parliament had to pass "Coercion"
Acts at the rate of nearly one every session. The complainants should
look nearer home and they would find from the records of the Irish
Legislature that during the "halcyon" days of "Grattan's
Parliament"--the eighteen years between 1782 and the Union--no less than
fifty-four Coercion Acts were passed, some of them of a thoroughness and
ferocity quite unknown in later legislation. The close of the nineteenth
century
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