English Parliament, and during the session of 1778 Irish affairs were more than once brought before the House of Commons. On the 7th of April 1778, Lord Nugent moved a series of resolutions to the effect that goods and merchandise, with the exception of wool and woollen manufactures, should be permitted to be exported directly from Ireland to any of the plantations and settlements of Great Britain, that similarly colonial produce should be allowed to be imported into Ireland, that the duties on cotton yarn of Irish manufacture should be repealed, and the prohibition of the exportation of glass removed. The resolutions were carried. Thereupon a fierce opposition arose from all the great English trading towns, and the Ministry in consternation, notwithstanding the support of Burke, withdrew their countenance from the measure. By the time however that the Bills founded on the resolutions became law, they had been reduced to a bare allowance of a free export of all Irish produce, always excepting the most important item of all: woollens. The discontent in Ireland at once assumed alarming dimensions.
North hoped to conjure the storm by removing some of the Catholic disabilities. The opportunity seemed favourable. On the motion of Sir George Savile seconded by Dunning, a Bill had just passed the English Parliament to relieve the Roman Catholics. Priests and Jesuits were relieved from the frightful penalties which attached to officiating in the services of their Church. Popish heirs educated abroad were no longer to forfeit their estates, nor were Protestant heirs to be able to oust Catholic owners otherwise legally entitled, and Catholics were to be no longer forbidden from acquiring legal property by means other than descent. "These prohibitions," said Dunning, "ought only to be mentioned in order to excite indignation, for they placed Roman Catholics at the mercy of informers, the lowest and basest of mankind."[1] Shelburne, in supporting the measure in the House of Lords, adverted to the case of a Mr. Molony, who had been
- ↑ Parliamentary History, xix. 1140.
