NOTE S. (Note A.-p. 55.) It is sometimes alleged that there has been a deterioration in the physical state of the Irish peasantry, and that at some former period they were raised above that depth of abject misery in which the great mass of them are now sunk. On consulting the political writings with respect to the past state of Ireland, there does not, however, appear to be the smallest foundation for this opinion: the tracts relating to Irish affairs during the last century are full of statements as to the extreme poverty of the mass of the population. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to cite some of the most remarkable of these testimonies. Swift, in his Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture,' (published in 1720,) has the following remarks: "I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords, who, by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers will, in a very few years, be utterly at an end. It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen labouring with all their might for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value, (whereby the whole order would, in an age, have been reduced to manifest beggary,) at the very instant when they were everywhere canting their own land upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance. I have heard NOTES. (Note A.-p. 55.) It is sometimes alleged that there has been a deterioration in the physical state of the Irish peasantry, and that at some former period they were raised above that depth of abject misery in which the great mass of them are now sunk. On consulting the political writings with respect to the past state of Ireland, there does not, however, appear to be the smallest foundation for this opinion: the tracts relating to Irish affairs during the last century are full of statements as to the extreme poverty of the mass of the population. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to cite some of the most remarkable of these testimonies. Swift, in his Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture,' (published in 1720,) has the following remarks: "I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords, who, by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers will, in a very few years, be utterly at an end. It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen labouring with all their might for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value, (whereby the whole order would, in an age, have been reduced to manifest beggary,) at the very instant when they were everywhere canting their own land upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance. I have heard great divines affirm, that nothing is so likely to call down a universal judgment from heaven upon a nation as universal oppression; and whether this be not already verified in part, their worships, the landlords, are now at leisure to consider. Whoever travels this country and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity is professed."-Swift's Works, vol. vi., pp. 281, 282, ed. Scott. Not less strong are the statements in another tract of the same writer, published in 1727. "It is manifest that whatever stranger took such a journey [through Ireland] would be apt to think himself travelling in Lapland or Ysland, rather than in a country so favoured by nature as ours, both in fruitfulness of soil and temperature of climate. The miserable dress, and diet, and dwelling of the people; the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom; the old seats of the nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their stead; the families of farmers, who pay great rents, living in filth and nastiness upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hog-sty to receive them: these indeed may be comfortable sights to an English spectator who comes for a short time only to learn the language, and returns back to his own country, whither he finds all his wealth transmitted. Nostra miseria magna est. "There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland which is not a logical demonstration of its poverty. The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars."- A short View of the State of Ireland,' Swift's Works, vol. vii., pp. 118, 119. In his Character of an Irish Squire,' Works, vol. vii., p. 380, Swift says," Every squire, almost to a man, is an oppressor of the clergy, a racker of his tenants, a jobber of all public works, very proud, and generally illiterate. detestable tyranny and oppression of landlords (he adds) are visible in every part of the kingdom." The "The prodigious number of beggars throughout this kingdom (he says in another tract), in proportion to so small a number of people, is owing to many reasons: to the laziness of the natives; the want of work to employ them; the enormous rents paid by cottagers for their miserable cabins and potato-plots; their early marriages without the least prospect of establishment; the ruin of agriculture, whereby such vast numbers are hindered from providing their own bread, and have no money to purchase it; the mortal damp upon all kinds of trade, and many other circumstances too tedious or invidious to mention. And to the same causes we owe the perpetual concourse of foreign beggars to this town, the country landlords giving all assistance, except money and victuals, to drive from their estates those miserable creatures they have undone."'Considerations about Maintaining the Poor,' vol. vii., p. 387. See also his celebrated ironical tract, entitled, A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of poor People in Ireland from being a burden to their Parents or Country, and for making them beneficial to the Public; 1729.'-Works, vol. vii., p. 262-74. Bishop Berkeley in his Querist,' written in 1735, bears an equally strong testimony to the destitute state of the Irish peasantry at that time, as appears by the following queries contained in this work : 19. "Whether the bulk of our Irish natives are not kept from thriving by that cynical content in dift and beggary which they possess to a degree beyond any other people in Christendom? 112. "Suppose the bulk of our inhabitants had shoes to their feet, clothes to their backs, and beef in their bellies? Might not such a state be eligible for the public, even though the squires were condemned to drink ale and cider? 132. "Whether there be upon earth any christian or civilized people so beggarly wretched and destitute as the common Irish? 1 357. "Whether our old native Irish are not the most indolent and supine people in Christendom? 358. "Whether they are yet civilized, and whether their |