their pampered owners, starved the miserable remnant of thinly scattered inhabitants: farms, of enormous extent, let by their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing landjobbers, by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value, among the wretched starvers upon potatoes and water: taxes yearly increasing, and tithes which the Catholic, without any possible benefit, unwillingly pays in addition to his priest-money-misery, oppression, and famine ! -These were undoubtedly the first and original causes, obvious to the slightest inspection, though resolutely denied; and every public investigation into them impudently frustrated by those whose sordid interest opposed their removal *.”

That the same causes have produced the more recent Whiteboy disturbances is proved by the almost general consent of the numerous and well-informed witnesses examined by the parliamentary committees above mentioned; whose evidence we will now adduce, so far as it bears on this part of the subject.

The extracts, which we now proceed to select, relate principally to the increase of the agricultural population, the want of employment, and the consequent desire to get possession of land, as the only means of support.

Francis Blackburne, Esq., Barrister, appointed in 1823 to administer the Insurrection Act in the counties of Clare and Limerick.

"Will you describe what you conceive has been the cause of the population increasing so considerably beyond any demand for employment that could exist?-That question requires some detail. The population in Ireland has been, at least in that part of Ireland to which my testimony refers, I believe rapidly increasing. I believe the Irish peasant scarcely ever forms, at least while he remains at home, an idea of

* Hardy's Life of Charlemont, vol. i. 171. 8vo. ed.

bettering his condition: they are improvident: and either from that improvidence, or the high rents, are seldom able to realize personal property. When a farmer, who has a few acres of land, (I mention this as an instance,) has his children to portion out in the world, and they are about to be married, he has nothing to give them but land. The farm is subdivided, the portions which each member of that family gets are in the next generation liable to be again subdivided; and thus subdivision of land and the multiplication of the species go on pari passu. The increase of population, in a country where land forms the only means of subsistence, has produced in Ireland the effect of creating, in my judgment, a perfectly erroneous criterion of the value of land."-Minutes of Evidence, Lords' Committee, 1824, p. 8.

66

My opinion was and is, that in Limerick, and the adjacent parts of the counties of Cork and Kerry, the spirit of insurrection which has broken out, proceeded from local causes, and the condition of the lower orders of the people.

"Have the goodness to state to the Committee generally, in what way you think the condition of the lower orders operated to produce this apprehension on your general view of the state of the country, your general view of the case ?-The population of the parts of the country, where insurrections were most prevalent, is extremely dense. The property is greatly subdivided, and the condition of the lower orders of the people is more miserable than I can describe it. The great increase of people, with other causes, which I shall advert to more particularly, had raised the rents of lands in that part to a degree that was perfectly exorbitant. Land in that county, which is totally destitute of manufactures, appears to me to have become (if I may use the expression) a necessary of life. The common mode of livelihood speculated upon in that country is the taking of land; of course, in proportion as the population multiplied, the demand for land increased; and that, combined with the extravagant prices of all species of agricultural produce, had raised land to a price beyond anything which we can call its intrinsic value. The subdivision of land

was also produced by speculations of a political kind; the consequence of this was, that land appeared to me to stand, generally speaking, at a rent which it was impossible for the tenant at any time to pay, reserving the means of decent subsistence. In that state of things, it appeared to me to be manifest the tithes must fall, postponed, as in general the remedies for them were, to the remedies of the landlord, with peculiar severity on the lower orders of people. The fall in the value of lands was nearly contemporaneous with the failure of the southern banks. I think I have now pointed out the leading circumstances of the local condition of that part of the country which I have before mentioned. The Committee will understand, that the connexion between the southern part of Limerick and the adjacent parts of Kerry and Cork is so intimate, that it was impossible to have formed an opinion with respect to one, without informing myself with respect to the others.". Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons, 1824, pp. 5, 6.

Maxwell Blacker, Esq., Barrister, appointed to administer the Insurrection Act, in 1822, in the counties of Cork and Tipperary.

"Have you considered what may have been the causes which led to the disturbances which took place in that part of Ireland? -The immediate cause of the disturbance I consider to be the great increase of population, and the fall in the price of produce after the war; the consequence of which was, that it was impossible to pay the rent or the tithes that had been paid in times when the country was prosperous; and I conceive that both the landlords and the clergy of the country were, for some time before they felt the necessity of abating in proportion to the necessity of the times, expecting, as I believe it was generally expected, that that depression would be momentary; and I conceive that the distress which was occasioned then by the demands that were made upon the people, which they were unable to satisfy at the time, produced, in a great measure, the commencement of those disturbances."-Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons, 1824, p. 58.

"As far as your knowledge goes, is the distress of the lower class in Ireland general?-Certainly; the distress has been since the war very general throughout Ireland.

"Is it of great extent?-I conceive so.

66

'Have you ever directed your attention to the ultimate causes of it? The ultimate causes must be sought much further back in the history of the country.

66

Will you state what has occurred to you upon that subject? -I conceive that the long course of confiscations of property and of penal laws had very bad effects at the time (whether they were necessary or not) upon the minds and upon the dispositions of that great body of the people of Ireland. The upper class of gentry who were deprived of their property, naturally felt great enmity to those who got their properties; the clergy, I conceive, must have felt extremely annoyed to find the rich provision for the church transferred into other hands; and the lower classes, who did not experience much one way or the other, were found to be very ready and dangerous instruments in the hands of those above them who were discontented. I conceive the consequence of all that has been, great want of education amongst the people, great indisposition to the Protestant establishment in the country, and a feeling which makes the lower classes of the people very easily excited.

"All the circumstances you have enumerated would rather produce discontent than distress; what are in your opinion the causes of the distress?-The great tendency to increase of population, arising mainly from the high prices during the war, which changed Ireland from a pasture country very much into an agricultural country; and from the relaxaation of the penal code in that particular, as to establishing forty-shilling freeholds among Catholics, which has led excessively to population; and also from the interest of the priests to increase population, whose greatest income is derived from the fees upon marriages."-Minutes of Evidence, House of Lords, 1824, p. 18.

Matthew Barrington, Esq., Crown Solicitor of the Munster Circuit for seventeen years.

"Then you attribute a great deal of the disturbance and outrage in Ireland as much to misery as to wickedness?—I attribute it very much to the want of employment, and in many instances to the anxiety to keep land, promising any rent, however unable they may be to pay it. An Irish tenant will offer any price for the land, and take his chance of keeping the possession. I attribute it sometimes to the oversetting land at more than its value, and then dismissing the tenant when he is unable to pay the rent promised.

"Knowing at the time that if he was turned out of that land he must starve? - Perhaps so.

"Do you think they have influence enough to lead as many as you have described into their schemes of insubordination and insurrection?—I think if a desperate gang form themselves in any county in Ireland, the rest of the poorer people are either ready or are compelled to join them, and it runs like wildfire through the county, if it is not checked in the first instance, to an extent that becomes alarming, as it has always done.

"Do you attribute the inflammable state of the population to the state of misery in which they generally are?—I do to a great extent; I seldom knew an instance where there was sufficient employment for the people that they were inclined to be disturbed; if they have plenty of work and employment they are generally peaceable."--Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons, 1832. Nos. 17, 18, 29, and 49.

George Bennett, Esq., Barrister, appointed in 1823 to administer the Insurrection Act in the county of Kildare and the King's County.

"Can you assign any cause for that predisposition to disturbance, when no particular local causes had occasioned it ?— I think that in Ireland there is a great disposition through the whole country, among the lower orders, to join in any disaffection or disturbance; that observation of course applies to King's County as well as to others.