The contrast between the history of Great Britain and that of Ireland
during the last century--in the one case showing progress and
prosperity, advancing, it is not too much to say, by leaps and bounds,
and in the other a stagnation which was relatively, if not absolutely,
retrograde--is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Those
who would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations are
probing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer at
hand. If the external forces in the two countries throughout that period
had been the same it would be right and proper to search for an
explanation in such directions as have been named, but that these forces
have not been so distributed it is my contention to prove.

The closing years of the eighteenth century in Ireland, coinciding as
they did with the achievement of Parliamentary independence, witnessed
in that country a remarkable growth of national prosperity. Up to the
year 1795 the taxation of the country never exceeded one and a half
millions of pounds, and the National Debt was not more than one million.
In the succeeding years the French war and the rebellion of '98 swelled
the expenditure, as did the maintenance of an armed force in the
country, which was the corollary of the rebellion, and that process
which Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, described as "courting those
whom he longed to kick," by which the Act of Union was passed, added
another million and a half to the national expenditure.

The result of the various causes was that in the year 1799-1800 the
taxation of the country had risen to three millions, and the National
Debt amounted to just under four millions of pounds.