partment of the female sex. At that time there were no saddles nor bridles, and they rode to church and market upon brechams and pillions placed on the horses, and halters on the horses' heads made of hair. They shod their horses' fore feet, but put no shoes upon their hind feet. The women had no little wheels, but span with the rock and spindle. Their yarn was uncommonly coarse. They had no candles to give them light in the winter nights. When the goodman of the house made family worship, they lighted a ruffy*, to enable him to read the psalm, and the portion of scripture, before he prayed. The men had no razors, but clipped their beards every Saturday night with scissors, to appear more decent upon the Sunday. The lower class in general were tainted strongly with superstitious sentiments and opinions, which had been transmitted down from one generation to another by tradition. They firmly believed in ghosts, hobgoblins, fairies, elves, witches and wizards. These ghosts and spirits often appeared to them at night. They used many charms and incantations to preserve themselves, their cattle and houses, from the malevolence of witches, wizards, and evil spirits, and believed in the beneficial effects of these charms. They believed in lucky and unlucky days and seasons, in marrying, or undertaking any important business. They frequently saw the devil, who made wicked attacks upon them when they were engaged in their religious exercises, and acts of devotion. They believed in benevolent spirits, which they termed brownies, who went about in the night time, and performed for them some parts of their domestic labour, such as thrashing and winnowing their corn, spinning, and churning. They fixed branches of mountain ash, or narrow-leaved service tree, above the stakes of their cattle, to preserve them from the evil effects of elves and witches. All these superstitious opinions and observations, which they firmly believed, and powerfully influenced their actions, are of late years almost obliterated among the present generation. Both men and women, about sixty years ago, were robust and healthy, and subject to few diseases. They

* A ruffy is explained by Jamieson to be "a wick clogged with tallow."

This

were strangers to every complaint of a nervous nature. arose from the hardy manner in which they were brought up from their infancy, and being accustomed to watch their cattle without doors in the night during the whole summer and harvest season. From the above authentic statistical account of this parish about sixty or seventy years ago, compared with its present state of improvement, in agriculture, the manners dress, and mode of living among its inhabitants, and their present sentiments in religion, the great improvement they have made in agriculture and civilization will appear in the most striking point of view; and as they are still in a gradual train of improvement at present, it gives the most flattering prospects of their future progress in the course of time. The greatest danger to their present progress is the raising the land to a racked rent, which industrious tenants may be unable to pay."Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. ix. p. 324-9.

See similar though less detailed descriptions of the improvement in the physical condition of the Scottish peasantry, ibid., vol. xi. p. 156; xiv. p. 481; xvi. p. 295. On the transition from the cottier system, the consolidation of farms, and the migration into the towns, see vol. ix. p. 561-3; vii. p. 178; xii. p. 412.

(Note D.-p. 336.)

In all the Irish political writings of the last century, absenteeism holds as prominent a place in the list of grievances as it does at the present day.

"The rents of land in Ireland (says Swift in his Seventh Drapier's Letter), since they have been of late so enormously raised and screwed up, may be computed to about two millions; whereof one-third part at least is directly transmitted to those who are perpetual absentees in England, as I find by a computation made with the assistance of several skilful gentlemen.”—Vol. vii., p. 40.

Upon this subject of perpetual absentees (he adds) I have

spent some time in very insignificant reflections; and considering the usual motives of human actions, which are pleasure, profit, and ambition, I cannot yet comprehend how those persons find their account in any of the three. I speak not of those English peers or gentlemen who besides their estates at home have possessions here, for in that case the matter is desperate; but I mean those lords and wealthy knights or squires whose birth, and partly their education, and all their fortune (except some trifle), and that in a very few instances, are in this kingdom. I knew many of them well enough during several years when I resided in England; and truly I could not discover that the figure they made was by any means a subject for envy; at least, it gave me two very different passions."— Ib., p. 42.

"As to the lands of those who are perpetual absentees (he likewise says), I do not see any probability of their being ever improved. In former times, their tenants sat at easy rents; but for some years past they have been, generally speaking, more terribly racked by the dexterity of merciless agents from England than even those who hold under the severest landlords here. I was assured upon the place by a great number of credible people, that a prodigious estate in the county of Cork being let upon leases for lives, and great fines paid, the rent was so high, that the tenants begged leave to surrender their leases, and were content to lose their fines."-Ib., p. 56. In another tract, he says, One-third part of the rents of Ireland is spent in England; which with the profit of employments, pensions, appeals, journeys of pleasure or health, education at the inns of court and both universities, remittances at pleasure, the pay of all superior officers in the army, and other incidents, will amount to a full half of the income of the whole kingdom, all clear profit to England."-Short View of the State of Ireland, 1727. Ib., p. 117.

66

See also Berkeley's Querist, Nos. 408-413.

In 1730 was published at Dublin and London "A List of the Absentees of Ireland, and the Yearly Value of their Estates and Incomes spent Abroad;" in which the yearly value spent

abroad is reckoned at 621,4991. 3s. 1d. The list of absentees published at Dublin in 1769 makes this sum 1,208,9827. 14s. 6d. The author of Commercial Restraints, p. 120, says that "the sums remitted from Ireland to Great Britain for rents, interest of money, pensions, salaries, and profits of offices, amounted at the lowest computation, from 1768 to 1773, to 1,100,000l. yearly." See also Arthur Young's List of Absentees, part ii., p. 57-60.

The following is Plowden's account of the absentee tax brought forward under the lieutenancy of Lord Harcourt, in 1773. "It must be allowed (he says) that this lord-lieutenant had the exclusive merit of having proposed a measure which the interests of Ireland had long called for, and which the influence of the great landowners in the country had always opposed. At the beginning of the first session under Lord Harcourt, an absentee tax was offered on the part of government, and, wonderful to say, was rejected. In the then distressed and impoverished state of Ireland, it will be neither rash nor harsh to conclude that the patriotism of the majority which rejected this seasonable relief to their country could have been neither disinterested nor pure. It was proposed that a tax of 2s. in the pound should be laid upon the net rents and annual profits of all landed property in Ireland, to be paid by all persons who should not actually reside in that kingdom for the space of six months in each year from Christmas, 1773, to Christmas, 1775. This measure, though so equitable in itself, so desirable for the country, which was drained of its own produce, to be spent in another country, could not so decently be pressed by the representatives of the English government as left to the free disposal of the Irish parliament, whose interest it more immediately concerned. It was not, therefore, made a government question; all their connexions were understood to be left at perfect liberty, and most of the servants of the Crown voted against the question. Considering the powerful interest that was made against the tax by the most considerable landowners on this and the other side of the water, the small majority by which it was rejected is

rather to be wondered at, there being 102 for, and 122 against the measure."-Hist. Review, vol. i., pp. 422, 423.

The question of an absentee tax was again brought forward by Mr. Molyneux in 1783; but his motion was lost upon a division, by 184 votes against 22.-Ib., vol. ii., Part I., p. 64.

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1765, has the following remarks bearing on this subject. “Those (he says) who live in another country, contribute nothing by their consumption towards the support of the government of that country in which is situated the source of their revenue. If in this latter country there should be no land-tax, nor any considerable duty upon the transference either of movable or immovable property, as is the case in Ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from the protection of a government to the support of which they do not contribute a single shilling. This inequality is likely to be greatest in a country of which the government is in some respects subordinate and dependent upon that of some other. The people who possess the most extensive property in the dependent, will in this case generally choose to live in the governing country. Ireland is precisely in this situation, and we cannot therefore wonder that the proposal of a tax upon absentees should be so very popular in that country.”—B. v., ch. ii. Part II. Art. 4.

(Note E. p. 349.)

EMIGRATION OF PROTESTANTS FROM IRELAND.

It appears that there was a continual emigration of Protestants from Ireland to America throughout the last century, at which time persecution by the Catholics could not have occurred. The emigrations appear to have almost constantly taken place from the northern ports: thus seven ships, leaving Belfast for America with 1000 passengers, in 1728, are mentioned in Boulter's Letters, vol. i., p. 288. The number of emigrants who left Ireland in 1771, 1772, and 1773, is stated in Newenham's Inquiry into the Population of Ireland, p. 59: