580 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
i a 237. Such were the changes at work within the realm, 
The one but the encouragement given to particular interests at home 
Too. affected other parts of the British System. The systematic 
ment the offorts of the legislature to increase the shipping and foster 
fone the industries of Great Britain had a marked, and, to some 
extent, an injurious effect upon the development of the 
American and West Indian plantations. These colonists 
were scarcely touched by legislation in regard to the English 
landed interest, except in so far as the protective tariffs, 
imposed by the Restoration Parliament, prevented them from 
establishing a trade in cereals. The case of Ireland was 
entirely different: the sister island had suffered severely 
from the Navigation Acts, and from the repression of her 
industries; but the chief grievances of which she had cause 
to complain arose from the agricultural, rather than from the 
industrial, or commercial, policy of the British Parliament. 
In climate and position Ireland is so far similar to Great 
Britain that her products entered into direct competition 
with those of the English soil. Probably nothing did greater 
harm to Ireland than the system of bounties by which 
English corn-growing was encouraged. The English farmer 
found it profitable to grow corn, and with the help of the 
bounty he was able to export it to Dublin, at rates which 
Jefied competition in a country where wheat-growing had 
nade but little progress. The very same measure which 
sncouraged the application of capital to the English soil, 
rendered it utterly unprofitable to invest money in im- 
proving the cultivation of Ireland’. The graziers had 
suffered under Charles IL; wool-growing was less profitable 
than it would have been, if the drapery trade had had a 
fair chance; while tillage was depressed by the English 
bounties. The backward condition of agriculture, despite 
the excellence of the soil, made a very deep impression 
on Arthur Young, and the causes are fully described by 
Mr Newenham. “The different disadvantages which the 
agriculture of Ireland laboured under * * * had, almost 
necessarily, the effect of preventing an accumulation of 
1 For an exceptional case of cultivation for export, see Pococke, Tour in 
Ireland in 1752, p. 64.