And, to humor the grasping selfishness of Manchester and Glasgow, Lord North met the demands of the Irish with a refusal of which every word of his speech on the propositions to America was the severest condemnation, and which he sought to mitigate by some new regulations in favor of the linen trade, to which the English and Scotch manufacturers made no objection, since they had no linen factories.

The Irish, in despair, had recourse to non-importation agreements, of which the Americans had set the example, binding themselves not to import nor to use any articles of English or Scotch manufacture with which they could possibly dispense.

And the result was, that Lord North yielded to fear what he had refused to justice, and the next year brought in bills to grant the Irish the commercial equality which they demanded.

Some of the most oppressive and vexatious of the penal laws were also relaxed; and some restrictions which the Navigation Act imposed on commerce with the West Indies were repealed.

But, strange to say, the English ministers still clung to one grievance of monstrous injustice, and steadily refused to allow judicial appointments to be placed on the same footing as in England, and to make the seat of a judge on the bench depend on his own good conduct, instead of on the caprice of a king or a minister.
But the manifest reluctance with which the English government had granted this partial relief encouraged the demand for farther concessions.