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.

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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 dirt 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?

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

habitations and furniture are not more sordid than those of the savage Americans ?"

Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to T. Prior, Esq., dated June, 1746, says, "Be as much upon your guard against poverty as against popery; take my word for it, you are in more danger of the former than of the latter.”—Misc. Works, vol ii., p. 542.

The following statements with regard to the poverty of the Irish people in the last century are made by the author of the pamphlet on the Commercial Restraints of Ireland :

"In 1723, the Duke of Grafton, in his speech from the throne, particularly recommends to the consideration of Parliament the finding out of some method for the better employing of the poor."-Commercial Restraints, p. 42.

"The years 1740 and 1741 were seasons of great scarcity, and in consequence of the want of wholesome provisions, great numbers of our people perished miserably, and the speech from the throne recommends it to both Houses to consider of proper measures to prevent the like calamity for the future." -Ib., p. 47.

"Scarcity in 1757; the want of corn, and necessities of the poor mentioned in the Lord-Lieutenant's speech."-Ib., p. 60. "In 1765, a scarcity caused by a general failure of potatoes. The price of corn was also high; and Acts were passed to prohibit distilling, and to prevent the exportation of corn for a limited time."-Ib., p. 76.

"1770 and 1771 were seasons of great distress."-Ib., p. 77. "Notwithstanding the success of that [the linen] manufacture, the bulk of our people have always continued poor, and in a great many seasons have wanted food. Can the history of any other fruitful country on the globe, enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and wretchedness, and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders of the people? There is no example in ancient or modern story. If the ineffectual endeavours by the representatives of those poor people to give them employment and food had not left sufficient memorials of their wretchedness; if their habita

tions, apparel and food were not sufficient proofs, I should appeal to the human countenance for my voucher, and rest the evidence on that hopeless despondency that hangs on the brow of unemployed industry."-Ib., p. 78.

"The present inability of Ireland (says the same writer) arises principally from this circumstance, that her lower and middle classes have little or no property."-Ib., p. 217.

Some statements with respect to the miserable condition of the Irish peasantry towards the end of the last century have been already cited in the first chapter (see particularly pp. 26, 27). The following testimonies may be added on this point:

"The vast inferiority of the lower ranks in Dublin (says Dr. Campbell, in 1775), compared even with those of the country towns in England, is very striking. Seldom do they shave, and when they do, it is but to unmask the traces of meagreness and penury. In a morning before the higher classes are up, you would imagine that half the prisons in Europe had been opened, and their contents emptied into this place. What must it have been then even within three years, when near two thousand wretches, much worse of course than any now to be seen, exercised the unrestrained trade of begging? I am told that the nuisance was risen to such a pitch, that you could scarcely get clear of any shop you entered without the contamination of either ulcers or vermin from the crowd of mendicants who beset the door."-Phil. Survey of the South of Ireland, pp. 29, 30.

"The manner in which the poor of this country live I cannot help calling beastly. For upon the same floor, and frequently without any partition, are lodged the husband and wife, the multitudinous brood of children, all huddled together upon straw or rushes, with the cow, the calf, the pig, and the horse, if they are rich enough to have one."-Ib., p. 144.

"I can see no reason why the causes which promote or prevent the growth of other animals should not have similar effects upon the human species. In England, where there is no stint of provisions, the growth is not checked, but on the