IRISH PROTECTING DUTIES. (Hansard, 8 June 1820)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
after adverting to several protecting duties which had been granted to various branches of Irish trade by the act of Union, and which would cease in the present year, declared it to be his intention 1005 to move that those duties should be further continued for a time to be limited. This proceeding was rendered necessary by the present state of Irish trade and manufacture. He then moved the following Resolutions: 1. "That it is expedient that the duties payable under two acts made in the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland respectively, for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, on certain articles the manufacture of either country enumerated in the Schedule No. 2 to the said acts respectively annexed being 10l. per cent on the true value thereof, be further continued till the 1st of Jan. 1825; and that three fourth parts thereof be further continued till the 1st of Jan. 1830; and that two fourth parts thereof be further continued till the 1st of Jan. 1835; and that the remaining fourth part thereof be further continued to the 1st of Jan. 1840, when the whole thereof shall finally cease and determine. 2. That the duties payable under the said acts on the woollen manufactures of Great Britain and Ireland, imported from one country into the other, be further continued till the 1st of Jan. 1825; and that three fourth parts thereof be further continued to the 1st of Jan. 1830; and that two fourth parts thereof be further continued to the 1st of Jan. 1835; and that the remaining fourth part thereof be further continued to the 1st of Jan. 1840, when the whole thereof shall finally cease and determine. 3. That the duties now payable on salt, hops, and coals, imported into Ireland from Great Britain, shall continue payable until further provision be made by parliament with respect to such duties."—The first resolution being put,

§ Mr. Ricardo
said, he was glad to see even that the time was to come when the country would rouse to those right principles, from which there never should have been any deviation; and hoped, that when the question of bounties with respect to linen, was brought forward, a proposition would be adopted to limit the existence of those bounties also to a certain period, as they were quite as objectionable, upon principle, as the duties referred to in the resolutions before the committee.

Mr. V. Fitzgerald
concurred with the general principles of the hon. gentleman, but he perceived that the hon. gentleman himself was not prepared to apply those principles to Ireland. The situation of Ireland was, indeed, very peculiar, as far 1006 as related to the provisions of the Union., for the protection and encouragement of the manufactures of that country. Whether the duties under consideration were calculated to afford valid protection to the Irish manufacture or not, was a question which he would not now discuss, but he maintained that it was not contemplated by the articles of Union that those duties should terminate in twenty years, and that to withdraw them suddenly would be productive of serious inconvenience and injury in Ireland. There were other duties which it was the intention of his right hon. friend to propose, and which were of a different nature from that referred to in this motion. He meant the duties on coals, hops, and salt; and of the first he could not approve—because he thought an article so material to the Irish, as fuel, should not be subject to such a duty. He did not, however, intend to oppose his right hon. friend's proposition, particularly from a consideration of his liberality towards Ireland, but still he must express a wish that the duty to which he alluded was reduced, although he admitted that its amount was not altogether very onerous.

Mr. J. Foster
observed, that the duties alluded to were protecting duties for England as well as for Ireland; and expressed a difference of opinion from his right hon. friend with respect to the duty upon coals.

§ Mr. Ricardo
considered those duties injurious to Ireland as well as to England, especially in the intercourse between the two countries.

Mr. J. Foster
declared himself an advocate for the total removal of all obstacles to the commercial intercourse between England and Ireland. He thought that the custom-houses between the two countries should cease to exist—that the interchange of their productions and manufactures should be entirely uninterrupted—that, in a word, the passage across the Channel should be as free and unembarrassed as that from one town to another in either country. It was, indeed, most vexatious to think, that every man now passing from the one country to the other was liable to have, not only his portmanteau or trunks, but even his person and the clothes he were rigidly examined by custom-house officers. Such a system ought not to be allowed to exist.