The
argument is simple.
The Union came precisely in the period in which capital was beginning to
dominate the organisation of industry. The Union denuded Ireland of the
capital which would have enabled her to transform the technique of her
manufactures, and so maintain the ground won under Grattan's Parliament.
The channels through which this export of capital proceeded were
absenteeism and over-taxation.
The first statement in this paragraph of plaint calls for no
elaboration. Arnold Toynbee took as the terminal dates of the Industrial
Revolution the years 1760 and 1830. The last generation of the
eighteenth century brought to birth the great inventions, but it was the
first generation of the nineteenth that founded on them large scale
production, and settled the structure of modern industry. Not without
profound disturbance and incalculable suffering was the new system
established in England; the story may be read in the pages of Marx,
Cunningham, Cooke Taylor, or any of the economic historians. But, for
all the blood and tears, it was established.
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