After Limerick
previously, the Irish having once lost their foreign trade, could not regain it.
The severe restrictions placed by England on the Irish woollen manufacture proved, perhaps, more disastrous to Ireland than any one of the other and numerous restraints placed on Irish trade and industry. But when we take all these other restrictions together, they form such an appalling summary of restrictive legislation that it becomes almost a matter of surprise how Ireland managed to preserve any industrial life at all. In her commercial policy towards Ireland England aimed at securing herself from all Irish rivalry in foreign and Plantation markets, at excluding all Irish manufacturers from her own market, and at obtaining for herself a monopoly of sale in the Irish market.9 Her policy with regard to the Irish glass manufacture well shows these aims. In the middle of George the Second's reign Ireland was forbidden to export her glass to any country whatever,10 and at the same time she was prohibited from importing any glass not of British manufacture.11 Great Britain thus destroyed the Irish export trade in glass while securing for herself a monopoly of sale in the Irish market. The Irish brewing industry was also crushed by English legislation. The English exported beer and malt in large
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