It is fallacious with regard to any country, but especially
so as regards Ireland, which, in his argument, he assumes to have her
proportion of the profit from the manufactured exports of the United
Kingdom, whereas she is not a manufacturing country at all, having as
exports, only some linen and the food that should be kept at home to be
consumed by her people. When taxes are to be levied and battles to be
fought, we are always an integral part of the United Kingdom; but when
there is a question of encouraging or extending manufactures, we are
treated as the rival and the enemy of England.[45]
The avarice and tyranny of landlords, is usually set down as a principal
cause of the great poverty and misery of the Irish people, during a long
period. If we examine the rents paid one hundred and fifty, or even one
hundred years ago, they will appear trifling when compared with the
rents of the present day; so that, at first, one is inclined to question
the accuracy of those writers who denounce the avarice and rack-renting
propensities of the landlords of their time. But when we examine the
question more closely, we find so many circumstances to modify and even
to change our first views, that by degrees we arrive at the belief,
that the complaints made were substantially true.
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