heir support of the
government. The consequence was that the government was unable to feel
confident of its power to carry any measure except at a price that it
was degrading to pay; while of those few members who were above all
suspicion of personal corruption, many were so utterly wrong-headed, and
had their minds so filled with unreasonable jealousy for what they
called the honor and dignity of Ireland, and with a consequent distrust
of England and of all Englishmen, that their honest folly was even a
greater obstacle to wise and good government than the mean cunning of
the others. There can hardly be a more striking proof of the
difficulties to be overcome by a minister than is furnished by a speech
made by a gentleman of the highest character, and of deservedly wide
influence in the Northern counties, Mr. Brownlow, of Lurgan, one of the
members for Armagh, which is quoted by Mr. Froude.[131]

Pitt was painfully conscious of the commercial injustice with which
hitherto Ireland had always been treated, and in the very first year of
his administration he applied himself to the removal of the most
mischievous of the grievances of which the Irish merchants complained,
adopting to a great extent a scheme which had been put before him by one
of the most considerable gentlemen of that body, which was based on the
principle of equalization of duties in both countries. It is unnecessary
here to enter into the details of the measure which he introduced into
the House of Commons. He avowed it to be the commencement of a new
system of government for Ireland, "a system of a participation and
community of benefits, a system of equality and fairness, which, without
tending to aggrandize one portion of the empire or to depress the other,
should seek the aggregate interest of the whole; it was a substitute for
the system which had hitherto been adopted of making the smaller country
completely subordinate to and subservient to the greater, of making the
smaller and poorer country a mere instrument for the advantage of the
greater and wealthier one. He, therefore, proposed now to create a
situation of perfect commercial equality, in which there was to be a
community of benefits, and also to some extent a community of burdens."
And he urged the House to "adopt that system of trade with Ireland that
would tend to enrich one part of the empire without impoverishing the
other, while it would give strength to both; that, like mercy, the
fa