After Limeick
on the exportation of any article must discourage its manufacture for home uses, we are able to realise the full extent of the injury inflicted on Ireland by this policy. England, indeed, herself suffered from the measure, for it produced two results both injurious to herself. The first was a large clandestine exportation of Irish raw wool to France and other countries, the one thing English legislation had for years been trying to prevent. The other result was the emigration of Irish weavers to the Continent. Irish Protestant weavers did much to establish new woollen manufactures in Germany and Holland, and were even welcomed by Louis XIV., while the Catholic weavers settled in Spain. Almost immediately after this time England began to find herself rivalled in her staple industry by foreign nations, for these countries could now get an indefinite quantity of good Irish wool which hitherto they had badly needed, and they were also being taught new methods of manufacture by Insh weavers.8
But although the interference of England with the Irish woollen trade proved injurious to herself, it proved much more injurious to Ireland. The emigration of so many skilled artisans was a real disadvantage to the country. The English Act of 1699 did not destroy the Irish woollen
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