But the weight of capital told more and
more as changes in the technique of transportation and production
ushered in our modern world. Lacking the solid reserves of its rival,
involved in all the exactions that fall on a tributary nation, the
cotton manufacture of Ireland lost ground, lost heart, and disappeared.
But let us resume the parable. If the "business man" responds to
capital, he will certainly not be obtuse to the appeal of coal. In this
feeder of industry Ireland was geologically at a disadvantage, and it
was promised that the free trade with Great Britain inaugurated by the
Union would "blend" with her the resources of the latter country. Did
she obtain free trade in coal? Miss Murray, a Unionist, in her
"Commercial Relations between England and Ireland" tells the story in
part:
"Coals again had hitherto been exported from Great Britain at a
duty of gd. per ton; this duty was to cease but the Irish import
duty on coal was to be made perpetual, and that at a time when all
coasting duties in England and Scotland had been abolished.
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