Acceso usuarios
Eoin Magennis
The legislative activity of the 18th-century Irish parliament has become clearer in recent decades. So, too, has the regulatory impulse and how this impacted upon markets and the economy in Britain and Ireland. Recent research on the regulation of Britain's economy between 1650 and 1850 has identified four areas in which the legislature and executive intervened: import/export trade; manufacturing production; labour markets and the domestic/internal market. This article aims to explore what such a regulatory impulse meant in the 18th-century Irish parliament. The article focuses on the 18th-century Irish coal trade as a case study, one which shows the influences of the belief in the possibilities for the economic improvement of Ireland, the concerns about high prices in a necessity of life for the urban poor and the residual anglophobia that such subjects could raise.
