But Pitt's Commercial
Propositions of 1785 failed, partly, indeed, owing to political
intrigues, but still more owing to the fundamental impossibility of
securing an effective customs union without some form of political
union.
When finally Ireland entered the Union it was with the severe handicap
of an industrial system artificially repressed for over a century. The
removal of the last traces of internal protection in 1824 only
accelerated the process, inevitable in any case, by which Irish
industries, with the exception of linen, were submerged. But
manufacturing industry was at the best a small matter in Ireland
compared with agriculture. And to Irish agriculture the Union meant an
immense development in every direction. Unfortunately the inheritance of
the preceding century, a vicious agrarian system and a low standard of
living, was not easily to be eliminated, and little attempt was made to
eliminate it. The great increase of agricultural production was
accompanied, not by a progressive and well-diffused rise in the standard
of national well-being, but by high rents and extravagance on the one
side, and, on the other, the rapid multiplication of a population living
on the very margin of subsistence.
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