1 James Watt to Matthew Boulton, 16 Mar. 1785, MS 3147/3/11, Archives of Soho, Boulton & Watt & Successor Firms: Correspondence & Papers (hereafter B&W), Library of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

2 William Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 6 Jan. 1785, Correspondence between the Right Honble. William Pitt and Charles, Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1781–1787, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland (NLI), Dublin, Ireland.

3 William Pitt, 12 May 1785, British House of Commons, in Parliamentary Register; or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons (London, 1785), 18:266.

4 The Parliamentary Register, or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 20 Jan. 1785–7 Sept. 1785 (Dublin, 1785), 4:120-125.

5 Rutland to Pitt, 16 June, 15 Aug., 24 July 1784, respectively, A14648, NLI.

6 Pitt to Thomas Orde, 19 Sept. 1784, Correspondence of William Pitt with Thomas Orde and the Duke of Rutland, 1784-87, Bolton Manuscripts, MS16355, NLI. India and Ireland were the burning imperial questions that Pitt confronted in the months after he took office. As soon as he passed his India Act, as Michael Duffy explains, Pitt deemed the Irish question to be “the most important and delicate we now have to attend to.” see Michael Duffy, The Younger Pitt (London, 2000), 79; see also John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (London, 1969), 198–213.

7 The Parliamentary Register, or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 20 Jan. 1785–7 Sept. 1785 (Dublin, 1785), 4:174–175.

8 A qualification was added to ensure the appropriation would be made only if the Irish government’s budget was balanced (The Parliamentary Register, or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 20 Jan. 1785–7 Sept. 1785 (Dublin, 1785), 4: 201).

9 Thomas Bartlett, “‘This famous island set in a Virginian sea’: Ireland in the British Empire, 1690–1801,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume II: The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford, 1998), 253.

10 Historians tend to qualify the term “colony” in speaking of eighteenth-century Ireland, with S. J. Connolly rejecting it altogether in favor of “divided kingdom:” see David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster, 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005) and S. J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630–1800 (New York, 2008).

11 The balance of power came under critical scrutiny from the time that William Molyneux penned his well-known criticism of English restrictions on the Irish woolen trade: see William Molyneux, The Case of Ireland’s Being Bound by acts of Parliament in England Stated (Dublin, 1698). For the growing influence of “Patriot” ideas, see Michael Brown, The Irish Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 2016).

12 See, for example, James Kelly, Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s (Cork, 1992), 131–132, 196.

13 James Livesey, “Free Trade and Empire in the Anglo-Irish Commercial Propositions of 1785,” Journal of British Studies 52, no. 1 (2013): 103–127; James Stafford, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750–1848 (Cambridge, 2022).

14 See, notably, Pincus, Steven, Bains, Tiraana and Reichardt, A. Zuercher, “Thinking the empire whole,” History Australia 16, no. 4, (2019): 610–637.

15 Kelly is representative of the first type of interpretation, and Livesey and Stafford of the second one.

16 Kelly, Prelude to Union, 84, 131–132, 196.

17 Livesey, “Free Trade and Empire,” 103.

18 Stafford, The Case of Ireland, 18, 97–8.

19 Detailed studies of British manufacturers’ attitudes tend to focus on an industry’s specific concerns or to pay limited attention to concrete economic issues: see, for example, Witt Bowden, “The Influence of the Manufacturers on Some of the Early Policies of William Pitt,” American Historical Review 29, no. 4 (1924): 655–674; Vivian Eve Dietz, “Before the Age of Capital: Manufacturing Interests and the British State, 1780–1800” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1989), 124–136.

20 Steven L. Kaplan and Sophus A. Reinert, “The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe,” in The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kaplan and Reinert (London, 2019), 1–34.

21 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1979).

22 Onur Ulas Ince, Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism (Oxford, 2018); Paul Cheney, “István Hont, the Cosmopolitan Theory of Commercial Globalisation, and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism,” Modern Intellectual History 19, no. 3 (Sept. 2022): 883–911.

23 This point is emphasized in both Ince, Colonial Capitalism and Cheney, “István Hont, the Cosmopolitan Theory of Commercial Globalisation, and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism.”

24 William Knox, Extra Official State Papers: Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Rawdon, and the Other Members of the Two Houses of Parliament, Associated for the Preservation of the Constitution and Promoting the Prosperity of the British Empire, by a late Under Secretary of State, vol. 1 (London, 1789), Part the Second, 8.

25 Leland J. Bellot, William Knox: The Life & Thought of an Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin, TX, 1977).

26 William Knox, The Present State of the Nation: Particularly with Respect to its Trade & Finances, Addressed to the King and Both Houses of Parliament (London, 1768), 28–30, 82.

27 The overall benefit of reducing the restrictions on Ireland’s trade, he estimated, would amount to £200,000 per year, allowing Ireland to make an annual fiscal contribution of £100,000 to the costs of the British Empire: Knox, The Present State of the Nation, 70–72.

28 In contrast, as Walsh observes, excise taxes made up the greater proportion of tax revenues in England: Patrick Walsh, “The Irish Fiscal State, 1691–1769,” Historical Journal 56, no. 3 (2013): 639–640; for a comprehensive analysis, see Patrick O’Brien, “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815,” Economic History Review 41 (Feb. 1988), 1–32.

29 For a recent biography of Burke, see Richard Bourke, Empire & Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton, 2015); for a contrast between Knox and Burke in terms of their affinities with Ireland, see Bellot, William Knox, chap. 1.

30 Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late Publication, Intituled “The Present State of the Nation,” reprinted in The Works of Edmund Burke, with a Memoir, 3 vols (New York, 1849 [1769]), 1:115–119.

31 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (London, 1776), vol. 2, bk. 4, 563.

32 For the statistical analysis proposed by Knox and Burke, see Bellot, William Knox, chap. 4. For influential economic historians’ use of the English trade statistics, see Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” Economic History Review 15 (1962), 302–303; Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, UK, 2002).

33 As Burke observed, “We know that the West Indians are always indebted to the merchants, and that the value of every shilling of West India produce is English property”: Observations, 106. And Knox was even more forthright about the dependence of the colonial economies on British credit in a slightly later pamphlet: see William Knox, The Interest of the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain, in the Present Contest with the Colonies, Stated and Considered (London, 1774).

34 Patrick O’Brien, “Mercantilist Institutions for the Pursuit of Power with Profit: the Management of Britain’s National Debt, 1756-1815,” in Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe, ed. Fausto Piola Caselli (New York, 2008), 179–208. Historical studies on specific aspects of the system of credit creation emphasize the distinctive qualities of the British system of credit, notably the widespread discounting of bills of exchange for merchants and manufacturers, as well as its evolution from financial arrangements for British public debt and its reinforcement through various acts of Parliament, especially the Colonial Debts Act of 1732 and its implications for collateral constituted by enslaved persons. For a comprehensive and insightful synthesis of this rich body of research, see Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2023), 165–186.

35 Knox, The State of the Nation, 30.

36 P. J. Marshall, “Richard Burke and Grenada: The Revenues of the Crown,” chap. 2 in Edmund Burke and the British Empire in the West Indies: Wealth, Power, and Slavery (Oxford, 2019), 47–65 and Bourke, Empire and Revolution, chap. 5. For the “chain of credit,” see Robin Pearson and David Richardson, “Social Capital, Institutional Innovation and Atlantic Trade before 1800,” Business History 50, no. 6 (Nov. 2008): 765–80.

37 Smith spent considerable time documenting the role of money as “a branch of the general stock” and he acknowledged that the discounting of bills of exchange was banks’ dominant activity in Britain. Moreover, he emphasized that when paper was created that exceeded what was required for the circulation of goods in Britain, “though this sum cannot be employed at home,” it will “be sent abroad, in order to seek that profitable employment which it cannot find at home:” cited at Smith, bk. 2, 381, 390, 420.

38 William Knox, The Interest of the Merchants and Manufacturers.

39 Burke, Observations, 129.

40 The restrictions imposed by England on Ireland’s exports of raw wool and woollens in the late 17^th century had been lamented by Irish elites since William Molyneux, The case of Ireland. Exceptions had been made, however, notably for Irish worsted yarn; for an extensive discussion of Ireland’s export trade in bay yarn to the Norwich textile industry, see Michael Nix, Norwich Textiles: A Global Story, 1750-1840 (Norwich, 2023), 100-128.

41 Irish exports of linen cloth and yarn were encouraged and constrained by the duties and bounties extended to them by the British parliament as well as the specific types of cloth, and places of export, to which bounties applied. As a result, Ireland developed one of the largest linen industries in Europe, but it had little presence in the finishing stages of the commodity chain (Conrad Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925); Thomas Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, UK, 1988); Jane Gray, “The Irish, Scottish and Flemish Linen Industries during the Long Eighteenth Century,” in Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, eds., The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective, (Oxford, 2003). For the important role of Irish linen cloth and yarn in British “cottons” before the American revolution, essentially fustians and other linen-cotton mixes, see Patrick O’Brien, Trevor Griffiths, and Philip Hunt, “Political Components of the Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660-1774,” The Economic History Review 44, no. 3 (1991): 395–423; John Styles, “The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning,” Textile History 51, no. 2 (2 July 2020): 195–236.

42 Hercules Langrishe, Considerations on the Dependencies of Great-Britain. with Observations on a Pamphlet, Intitled the Present State of the Nation (London, 1769). Irish exports of linen cloth and yarn, as well as worsted yarn amounted to more than 75 per cent of Irish exports to Britain by the late 1760s: see Louis M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, 1660–1800 (Manchester, 1968), 50.

43 Langrishe, Considerations on the Dependencies, 42.

44 Langrishe thought it was astonishing that Ireland made as high a fiscal contribution as it did relative to its wealth (42). Even in absolute terms, Ireland paid more tax per capita at the time than Scotland: see Walsh, “The Fiscal State in Ireland,” 639.

45 Langrishe, Considerations on the Dependencies, 40.

46 Langrishe, 61.

47 Cullen observes that a discount market in paper payable in Dublin dates only from 1800 and he attributes its absence to the erratic development of the public debt: see Louis M. Cullen, “Landlords, Bankers and Merchants: The Early Irish Banking World, 1700–1820,” in Economists and the Irish Economy From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, ed. Antoin E. Murphy (Dublin, 1784), 25–44. For a detailed discussion of the historical developments that generated this outcome, see F. G. Hall, History of the Bank of Ireland (Dublin, Ireland, 1949), 1–29.

48 Conrad Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925), 167.

49 Gill, 123–125.

50 Knox, paper delivered to Lord Frederick Campbell, when appointed Secretary to Ireland, 1767, Extra-Official, Appendix 1, Part the Second.

51 Men like Edmund Sexten Pery, speaker of the House of Commons from 1771, and his close confidant, Lucius O’Brien, pursued improvement as parliamentary patriots in opposition to government: David A. Fleming, Edmund Sexten Pery: The Politics of Virtue and Intrigue in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2023), 141–146). But there were also men like Langrishe, Henry Flood, and John Foster who tried to combine a commitment to Irish economic improvement with short- or long-term roles in the Irish government. Langrishe served as commissioner of the Irish revenue from 1774–1801, Flood filled the office of the vice-treasurer from 1775 to 1781, and most important of all, John Foster served as acting and then official Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1777 to 1785. In acknowledgement of his delicate balance of loyalties, Foster was referred to as the “Ministerial Patriot” but his biographer suggests that he might have embraced the sardonic label: A. P. W. Malcomson, John Foster (1740–1828): The Politics of Improvement and Prosperity (Dublin, 2011).

52 In 1776, he wrote to the then Chief Secretary of Ireland, John de Blaquire, to advocate a plan for removing “the difficulties which Ireland labours under in the establishment of a fishery.” As he explained, the plan was really a test case for some alteration of the Navigation Acts, which sorely penalized Ireland, with “[o]ne great object of the plan” to attract “the unemployed money of Europe into Ireland:” see Knox, Extra-Official, Part the Second, 13.

53 Knox, 21.

54 O’Brien was put in contact with Knox by the then chief secretary of Ireland, John de Blaquire, to whom he reportedly “professes a million of obligations” for the service: see Blaquire to Knox, 14 May 1776 in Knox, Extra Official, 15–16.

55 John Foster to John Holroyd, 25 Aug 1777 and 30 Dec. 1777 respectively, Foster-Massarene Papers (hereafter FM), T2965/49 and T2965/53, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).

56 Foster to Holroyd, 30 Dec. 1777.

57 Knox, Extra-Official, 62–70, 79–90.

58 Maurice O’Connell, Irish Politics and Social Conflict in the Age of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1965), 37–67.

59 Parliamentary register, or History of the proceedings & debates of the House of Commons, 4^th session of the 14^th parliament (London, 1778), 9, cited at 180, petitions printed on 180–194.

60 O’Connell, 37–67.

61 Dickson estimated that there were more than 10,000 men and women directly engaged in textile-related employment in the capital and once we allow for their families their importance in a population of 200,000 or so becomes clear: see David Dickson, The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-Century Transformation (New Haven, 2021), 105–106.

62 Jacqueline Hill, From Patriots to Unionists: Dublin Civic Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism, 1660-1840, (Oxford, 1997), 138–165.

63 Alice Effie Murray, A History of the Commercial and Financial Relations be- tween England and Ireland, from the Period of the Restoration, rev. ed. (London, 1907), 75; Louis M. Cullen, “Problems in and Sources for the Study of Economic Fluctuations, 1660–1800,” Irish Economic and Social History 41 (2014), 1–19, table 1; James Kelly, “Scarcity and Poor Relief in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Subsistence Crisis of 1782–4,” Irish Historical Studies 28:109 (1992–93), 38–62.

64 O’Connell, Irish Politics and Social Conflict, 129–167 ; Eoin Magennis, “Mathew Carey, ‘Protecting Duties’ and the Dublin Crowd in the Early 1780s,” Éire-Ireland 50, nos. 3 & 4 (2015): 173–198.

65 George O’Brien, “Irish Free Trade Agitation of 1779,” English Historical Review 38, no. 152 (Oct. 1923): 565; English Historical Review 39, no. 153 (Jan. 1924).

66 Foster drew his salary as customs officer of Ireland and used detailed trade data to make his points, pointing out that British imports to Ireland had diminished by more than £600,000 in the last year, a decline of about a third, and “will probably fall near a Million this Year”: Opinion of John Foster, 7 July 1779, in George O’Brien, “Irish Free Trade Agitation of 1779,” English Historical Review 39, no. 153 (Jan. 1924): 96-97, 102.

67 See, for example, Eoin Magennis, “Mathew Carey, ‘Protecting Duties’ and the Dublin Crowd in the Early 1780s,” Éire-Ireland 50, nos. 3 & 4 (2015): 173–198; David Lammey, “The Free Trade Crisis: A Reappraisal,” in Politics, Parliament, and People: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Irish History, ed. Gerard O’Brien (Dublin, 1989), 74, 75; O’Connell, Irish Politics and Social Conflict, 129–167.

68 Knox, Extra-Official, 9; extract of a letter from Mr. Knox to Mr. Eden, 6 Dec. 1781, in Knox, 166–169.

69 These warnings were clearly expressed in the comments sent to the lord lieutenant by Irish political elites: see O’Connell, Irish Politics and Social Conflict, 129–167.

70 Parliamentary concern with combinations was not new in Ireland and had already given rise to several anti-combination laws: see Patrick Park, “The Combination Acts in Ireland, 1727–1825,” Irish Jurist 4, no. 2 (Winter, 1979), 340–359. The Grand Committee claimed that existing legislation could be more strictly enforced but insisted that “some new Law should be immediately made” to ensure the suppression of combinations.

71 Sir Lucius O’Brien, “Report of the Grand Committee for Trade,” (hereafter Report of O’Brien Committee), 3 Mar. 1780, in Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, n.d.), Appendix, x.

72 For a recent discussion, see Lorenzo Avellino, “‘They Have No Property to Lose:’ The Impasse of Free Labour in Lombard Silk Manufactures (1760–1810),” International Review of Social History 68, no. 31 (2023): 135–155.

73 Report of O’Brien Committee, x.

74 Report of O’Brien Committee, cxiii; see also testimony from Robert Stephenson and George Holmes, x.

75 Report of O’Brien Committee, x.

76 Report of O’Brien Committee, x.

77 Report of O’Brien Committee, cxiv.

78 Combination Act, 1780, 19 & 20 George III, c 19 [Ire.]. Being absent from work for three days was enough to allow a journeyman or apprentice to be convicted of unlawful combination along with a long list of other acts, such as destroying machinery or preventing its introduction.

79 See, notably, Mr. Mason, “Report from the Grand Committee of Trade,” 6 Mar. 1782, in Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland, Parliament, House of Commons, Kingdom of Ireland, (Dublin, 1782), Appendix, cccclxxxvi–ccccxcix, and John Foster, Report from the Committee on the State of the Linen Manufacture and the Linen Trade, First Report, 25 Dec. 1781, in Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1781), Appendix, ccccxvi–ccccxxxviii.

80 Extract of a letter from Mr. Knox to Mr. Eden, 6 Dec. 1781 in Knox, Extra-State, Part the Second, 166–169.

81 Hall, Bank of Ireland, 30–47; Malcomson, John Foster, 60; see also 37–38; A. M. Fraser, “David Digues La Touche, Banker, and a Few of His Descendants,” Dublin Historical Record 5, no. 2 (1943): 55–68; David Dickson and Richard English, “The La Touche dynasty,” in The gorgeous mask: Dublin 1700–1850, ed. David Dickson (Dublin, 1987); https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/46255.

82 Brenda Collins, Trevor Parkhill, and Peter Roebuck, “A White Linen Hall for Newry or Belfast?” Irish Economic and Social History 43, no. 1 (Dec. 2016): 50–61.

83 John Foster to Sackville Hamilton, 29 Mar. 1780, FM, D562/8371, PRONI. Hamilton was Foster’s colleague in the Irish administration, and secretary for port business at the time: see Patrick M. Geoghegan, “Hamilton, Sackville,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, accessed 5 Mar. 2024, https://www.dib.ie/biography/hamilton-sackville-a3762.

84 Duties on imports of refined sugar proved particularly controversial in Ireland as did the closure of one of the only “friendly” markets when Portugal refused to extend Ireland the same access to its market that it had long accorded Britain: see Nini Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612–1865 (Houndmills, 2007), 173–176; James Kelly, “The Irish Trade Dispute with Portugal 1780–87,” Studia Hibernica 25 (1990): 7–48.

85 Kelly, Prelude to Union, 141–150; Kelly, “Scarcity and poor relief,” 55–7.

86 The Parliamentary Register, or, History of the proceedings and debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 14 Oct. 1783–14 May 1784, 3:27.

87 Luke Gardiner, Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State of the Manufactures of this Kingdom, and What may be the Necessary for the Improvement Thereof, and also into the Quantity and Value of the Exports and Imports of Ireland, 5 Mar. 1784 (hereafter Report from Gardiner Committee), in Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1784), Appendix, cxxxv–ccvi.

88 The Parliamentary Register, or, History of the proceedings and debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 14 Oct. 1783–14 May 1784, 2:130.

89 Parliamentary Register, 1783–4, 129.

90 Report from the Gardiner Committee, cxxxv.

91 Report from the Gardiner Committee, clxii.

92 Report from the Gardiner Committee, clxiii.

93 Report from the Gardiner Committee, clxiii, clxii, clx.

94 Even before his investigation was complete, Gardiner had said that he would leave restrictions on raw materials to another committee, presumably to avoid conflict with the landed interests that dominated the Irish parliament: Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 129.

95 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 126.

96 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 127.

97 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 128.

98 As we shall see below, the Gardiner report may have had some influence on the Hamilton report through the ideas of prominent Irish journalist, Mathew Carey.

99 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 130; For Foster’s intervention, see Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 130–131.

100 John Parnell to Thomas Pelham, 31 Dec. 1784, Protecting Duties, Bolton Manuscripts, MS 15,846/(2), NLI.

101 Parnell to Pelham, 31 Dec. 1784.

102 Parnell to Pelham, 31 Dec. 1784.

103 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 132.

104 Parnell to Pelham, 31 Dec. 1784.

105 As Malcomson explains, Foster’s Corn Law (23 & 24 Geo. III, c. 19 [Ire.]) granted bounties on the export of corn and imposed duties on corn imports on a sliding scale linked to Irish prices: Malcomson, John Foster, 69).

106 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 141.

107 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 143.

108 On Monday, 5 Apr. 1784 (Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 143)

109 Volunteers Journal, 5 Apr. 1784; Magennis, “Mathew Carey,” 192.

110 “Hibernicus,” “Thoughts on the State of the Infant Manufactures of This Country,” Volunteers Journal, 31 Mar. 1784, 1.

111 Parliamentary Register, 1783-4, 168

112 Stephen Meardon, “‘A Reciprocity of Advantages’: Carey, Hamilton, and the American Protective Doctrine,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, volume 11, no. 3 (2013): 431–454.

113 Kelly, Prelude to Union, 81.

114 Parliamentary Register, 1783–1784, 222.

115 Duke of Rutland to William Pitt, 16 June 1784, Correspondence between the Right Honble. William Pitt and Charles, Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1781–1787, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

116 William Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 24 July 1784, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

117 Thomas Orde to William Pitt, 7 Sept. 1784, MS 16,355, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

118 Orde to Pitt, 31 Aug. 1784, MS 16,355, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

119 Orde to Pitt, 31 Aug 1784; Orde to Pitt, 7 Sept. 1784, MS 16,355, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

120 Orde to Pitt, 7 Sept. 1784.

121 Pitt to Orde, 19 Sept. 1784, MS 16,355, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI; see also Pitt to Rutland, 7 Oct. 1784, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

122 Pitt to Orde, 19 Sept. 1784, MS 16,355, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

123 Pitt to Orde, 19 Sept. 1784.

124 Letter from John Foster, 15 Sept. 1784, Trade and Commerce, Construction of the Navigation Act, Bolton Manuscripts, MS 16,356, NLI.

125 Letter from John Foster, 15 Sept. 1784.

126 Letter from John Foster, 15 Sept. 1784.

127 Letter from John Foster, 15 Sept. 1784.

128 A Proposition Addressed to the Nobility and Gentry of Munster by Robert Stephenson, for Restoring and Introducing the Linen and Other Manufactures into the 6 Counties of Munster (1784), MS 15,827, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

129 The Respective Reports of John Greer, Esq.; Inspector-General for the Province of Ulster, and of John Arbuthnot, Esq.; Inspector-General for the Provinces of Leinster, Munster and Connaught, on Mr. Robert Stephenson’s Schemes and Proposed Premiums for the Provinces of Ulster and Munster (June 1784), NLI, Bolton Manuscripts, P2502(5), 26.

130 Construction of the Navigation Act, n.d., no page numbers, Trade and Commerce, Bolton Manuscripts, MS 16,356, NLI.

131 Construction of the Navigation Act, MS 16,356, NLI.

132 Construction of the Navigation Act, MS 16,356, NLI.

133 Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 7 Oct. 1784 and Duke of Rutland to Pitt, 6 Jan. 1785, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

134 See, especially, Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 4 Nov. 1784, and 4 Dec. 1784, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

135 Duke of Rutland to Pitt, 6 Jan. 1785, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI. The “hereditary revenues” had been created in 1662 and 1663 and consisted primarily of customs and excise duties as well as hearth money and quit rents.

136 That was true not only with respect to his fiscal provision but also with a plan for parliamentary reform for Ireland. Pitt proposed “a sober and rational reform,” one “from which Catholics are excluded (which beyond a doubt they must be)” to “separate the cause of Reform from theirs, and by that means to unite the Protestant interest against them:” William Pitt to Thomas Orde, 19 Sept. 1784, Bolton Manuscripts, MS 16,355, NLI. He gave up on that plan only when his own London ministry forced him to withdraw Irish parliamentary reform to avoid “shocking or startling any of the friends to Government while the great commercial arrangement is in agitation:” see Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 11 Jan. 1785, Bolton Manuscripts, A 14,648, NLI.

137 They were made public by Thomas Orde in his presentation to the Irish House of Commons on 7 Feb. 1785 Parliamentary Register, or, History of the proceedings and debates of the House of Commons of Ireland, 20 Jan. 1785–7 Sep. 1785, 4:120–125.

138 Parliamentary Register, 1785, 121.

139 Parliamentary Register, 1785, 122.

140 An analysis presented to the Gardiner Committee showed that Irish manufacturers paid 14s., whereas their British counterparts paid only 9s. for one stone of the same quality wool: Report from the Gardiner Committee, cxlvi.

141 Pitt to Duke of Rutland, 6 Jan. 1785, A14648, Bolton Manuscripts, NLI.

142 Even in the newer but smaller branch of cotton and cotton mixed goods, it was Dublin manufactures that showed the most promise: John Foster, Report on Bounties, from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Expenditure of £15,000 Granted Last Session of Parliament for the Purpose of Paying Bounties on the Sale of the Manufactures of Wool, of Wool Mixed, of Cotton, of Cotton Mixed, Thread, Kentings, and Manufactures of Iron and Copper, 12 Feb. 1785, in Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland, vol. 20, 20 Jan. 1785–7 Sept. 1785 (Dublin, 1785), Appendix, cccliii–ccclx.

143 Parliamentary Register, 1785, 174.

144 Parliamentary Register, 1785, 176.

145 John Foster, Report on Bounties, 12 Feb. 1785.

146 What “encouragement and assistance” meant was “the Distribution of the Wheels, Reels, Looms, Jennies, Carding Machines, and other Implements necessary in any of the said Manufactures,” and the “apprenticing of Children of proper Ages, from the public Charities” to be trained in the countryside “in the most advantageous Mode of Industry”: John Foster, cccliii.

147 Kelly, Prelude to Union, 113.

148 John Baker Holroyd, 1st earl of Sheffield, Observations on the Manufactures, Trade, and Present State of Ireland (London, 1785), P1750, NLI.

149 Malcomson, John Foster, 32. Sheffield may have contributed to Foster’s thinking on the Navigation Acts in his earlier influential pamphlet on commerce with the United States (with Pitt played an unwitting role in the process), although other imperial specialists of Irish affairs like William Knox, as we have seen, had expressed similar views: Holroyd, Observations on the Commerce of the American States with Europe and the West Indies; Including the Several Articles of Import and Export; and on the Tendency of a Bill now Depending in Parliament (London, 1783); Knox, Extra-Official State Papers, Part the Second, 10–12.

150 Holroyd, Observations on the Manufactures, 22–23.

151 Holroyd, 24; see also 25–26.

152 Holroyd, 35, 39, 43.

153 Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, vol. 15, 1781–1794, 21–22, Josiah Wedgwood, Reply to Dean Tucker’s Pamphlet, Reflections on the Present Matters in Dispute between Great Britain and Ireland, 1785.

154 In Feb. 1785, when Pitt’s Irish proposals were presented to the Irish parliament, members were told that there was no officer in Ireland capable of furnishing information on bilateral trade, existing duties, etc., that parliamentarians requested. In Aug. 1785, in contrast, the Appendix is full of tables, replete with such information and much more, as well as copies of evidence given to the British parliament: see 12 Aug. 1785, Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1784), Appendix.

155 See, for example, Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Do We Need a Theory of Merchant Capitalism?,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 20, no. 2 (Spring, 1997): 255–267; Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism (Princeton, 2016); Jairus Banaji, A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism (Chicago, 2020).

156 One major distinction that contemporaries made between the French and British imperial economies, for example, related to credit, notably the fact that French manufacturers offered only six months credit compared to eighteen months for their British counterparts: Great Britain. Parliament, House of Commons. Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council Appointed for the Consideration of all Matters Relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations Submitting to His Majesty’s Consideration the Evidence and Information They Have Collected in Consequence of His Majesty’s Order in Council, 11 Feb. 1788 (London, 1788), part V, House of Commons papers, Great Britain parliament.

157 Giorgio Riello, “Cotton Textiles and the Industrial Revolution in a Global Context,” Past & Present, Volume 255, Issue 1, May 2022, 4.