In spite of such inauspicious circumstances for the expression of popular feelings of opposition, occasions and issues did arise in which they did come to play a significant role. A major issue even during William's reign was the effect of British mercantilism on Ireland. Legislation in 1697 was considered by the English parliament to prohibit the export of wool from Ireland because it threatened the English woolen industry. The measure did not pass, but it prompted William Molyneux, a representative for Trinity College in the Irish Commons, to write a celebrated critique of the English claim to legislate for Ireland. Molyneux, who was a friend of John Locke, the major theorist for the Glorious Revolution, based his critique of the English claims on medieval precedent and on the general principle of the unnaturalness of taxation without consent or legislation without representation, a theme that would be uttered three-quarters of a century later in the American colonies. Regardless of Moyneux's rhetoric, the English parliament in 1699 passed legislation prohibiting the export of wool from Ireland except to England, where the levy of severe duties made it uncompetitive.
Another instance of a popular opposition to the government and an assertion of the right of self-governance for Ireland, or at least, for the Ascendancy in Ireland against the English, was the celebrated issue of "Wood's ha'penny." Wood, a friend of a former mistress of King George I, had been issued a license to mint copper half-pennies and farthings. There was criticism within the Irish parliament as well as from officials in government in Ireland, not to mention a certain degree of popular public outrage. The issue prompted the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift, to write pamphlets attacking the mercantile restrictions that the English were imposing on Ireland. Swift wrote not just from the perspective of Irish entrepreneurs but also from that of the Irish poor, who were faced with unemployment. His pamphlets on the ha'penny issue were called the Drapier’s Letters, and asserted that "the whole people of Ireland," by which he meant, the Irish members of the established church, "are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England." The implication of this Ascendancy nationalism as asserted by Molyneux and Swift was that the Ascendancy succeeded to the Normans, who had a parliament in the medieval Irish kingdom and, as such, constituted a country distinct from England. The complication to this argument was that the position of the Ascendancy over the overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland was due to the English connection. The other logical alternative to asserting legislative inde-
Pendence was to accept formal union with England in a single parliament, as had occurred between England and Scotland in 1707. However, that option would be considered only at the end of the century and only after traumatic social upheaval.
World History
