There can hardly be a more striking proof of the difficulties to be overcome by a minister than is furnished by a speech made by a gentleman of the highest character, and of deservedly wide influence in the Northern counties, Mr.Brownlow, of Lurgan, one of the members for Armagh, which is quoted by Mr.Froude.[131] Pitt was painfully conscious of the commercial injustice with which hitherto Ireland had always been treated, and in the very first year of his administration he applied himself to the removal of the most mischievous of the grievances of which the Irish merchants complained, adopting to a great extent a scheme which had been put before him by one of the most considerable gentlemen of that body, which was based on the principle of equalization of duties in both countries.

It is unnecessary here to enter into the details of the measure which he introduced into the House of Commons.

He avowed it to be the commencement of a new system of government for Ireland, "a system of a participation and community of benefits, a system of equality and fairness, which, without tending to aggrandize one portion of the empire or to depress the other, should seek the aggregate interest of the whole; it was a substitute for the system which had hitherto been adopted of making the smaller country completely subordinate to and subservient to the greater, of making the smaller and poorer country a mere instrument for the advantage of the greater and wealthier one.

He, therefore, proposed now to create a situation of perfect commercial equality, in which there was to be a community of benefits, and also to some extent a community of burdens." And he urged the House to "adopt that system of trade with Ireland that would tend to enrich one part of the empire without impoverishing the other, while it would give strength to both; that, like mercy, the favorite attribute of Heaven, "'Is twice blessed-- It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.'" It might, he said, be regarded as "a treaty with Ireland by which that country would be put on a fair, equal, and impartial footing with Great Britain, in point of commerce, with respect to foreign countries and our colonies." The community of burdens which his measure would impose on Ireland was this: that whenever the gross hereditary revenue of Ireland should exceed L650,000 (an amount considerably in excess of anything it had ever yet reached), the excess should be applied to the support of the fleet of the United Kingdom.

It was, in fact, a burden that could have no existence at all until the Irish trade had become far more flourishing and productive than as yet it had ever been.