Brownlow did not
hesitate to denounce as one "tending to make Ireland a tributary nation
to Great Britain. The same terms," he declared, "had been held out to
America, and Ireland had equal spirit with America to reject them." He
even declared that "it was happy for Mr. Orde" (the Chief Secretary, who
had introduced the measure into the Irish House of Commons) "that he was
in a country remarkable for humanity. Had he proposed such a measure in
a Polish Diet, he would not have lived to carry back an answer to his
master. If," he concluded, "the gifts of Britain are to be accompanied
with the slavery of Ireland, I will never be a slave to pay tribute; I
will hurl back her gifts with scorn." Baffled by such frantic and
senseless opposition, Pitt condescended to remodel his measure. In its
new form it was not so greatly for the advantage of Ireland. He had been
constrained to admit some limitation of his original liberality by the
opposition which, it had met with in England also where Fox, at all
times an avowed enemy of freedom of trade, had made himself the
mouth-piece of the London and Liverpool merchants, who could not see,
without the most narrow-minded apprehension, the monopoly of the trade
with India and the West Indies, which they had hitherto enjoyed,
threatened by the admission of Ireland to its benefits.
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