tion. He pays, indeed, a passing tribute to the fallen dynasty, but the true pathos, the genuine feeling of his poetry is elsewhere. He sees in the Revolution the final downfall, the ruin and the exile of the old Catholic gentry of Ireland; depriving the cultivators of the soil of their natural protectors and guides; leaving them in all their helplessness and misery at the mercy of new masters who were aliens in race and language and creed, who were bound to them by no bond of sympathy or affection, who knew nothing and cared nothing for the customs and the traditions of the land. This was, indeed, the profound and abiding tragedy of Irish history, and its bitter fruits may be traced even to the present hour.1

In the long period of profound calm that now prevailed religious divisions gradually softened and large portions of the penal laws became inoperative. They remained on the Statute-book, but they were looked upon by enlightened Protestants simply as a reserve of power which might be employed if danger arose. The seditious newspaper and the seditious agitator were as yet unknown. The occasional and fitful attempts that were made to strengthen Protestantism by converting Catholics or by planting foreign Protestant settlements among them were much more due to industrial than to theological considerations. They sprang from the conviction that Protestantism brought with it a higher level of industry, civilisation and order.

The tracts of Swift, and indeed nearly all the contemporary letters, describe the condition of the great body of the agricultural population as scarcely removed from barbarism. They were utterly ignorant, utterly

1 The poems of O'Rahilly, with translation, introduction and notes by the Rev. Patrick Dinneen, have been printed in the 3rd volume of the Irish Texts Society.

THE PASTURE LANDS

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unguided and abjectly poor. Their agriculture was not only of the rudest, but also of the most wasteful description, fatally impairing the fertility of the soil, and they had all the idleness and all the improvidence of savages. The price of labour was extremely low and saving was almost unknown. On the other hand food was extraordinarily cheap; potatoes, milk and turf were very abundant, and food and fire were nearly the only wants of men in this stage of civilisation. A few hours' labour enabled them to erect their mud hovels, and their clothes were of the humblest description. In good years there was a rude plenty, and living idle lives in a temperate and healthy climate they were in general physically strong and constitutionally gay. But if the potatoes failed utter famine. at once ensued, and at least two terrible famines desolated Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century and swept multitudes away.

The one really profitable agricultural industry was that of the grazier, and immense tracts were laid out in pasture. Nature had made Ireland eminently suited for it, and there was an enormous and profitable export of beef and butter from Cork. Turning land into pasture was not only the most profitable kind of farming, it had also the great advantage of leaving the productive energies of the soil unimpaired; and Catholics especially found it desirable, as it enabled them much more easily than in other kinds of agriculture to evade the law restricting their legal profits. The population of Ireland was still very scanty, and there were vast lonely expanses where for many miles scarcely a cottage was to be seen. But the tendency of pasture to encroach on arable land involved many evictions, and it was in the eighteenth century the chief source of agrarian crime. The Houghers of Cattle, who were formidable in the west during the first half of the eighteenth century, and the

Whiteboys, who became so formidable about the middle of the century, took their origin chiefly from this cause.

The picture I have drawn of Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century is a very dark one, but it is possible to portray it in too gloomy colours. If her remote situation brought with it many evils, it at least saved her from the foreign invasions which had desolated some of the fairest countries in Europe, and at home she enjoyed several generations of absolute political tranquillity. Nothing in the Irish history of the first eighty years of the eighteenth century appears more remarkable to a modern observer than her perfect quiet at times when grave dangers menaced England, and when she was herself almost denuded of troops. There was no force resembling the modern constabulary, and although lawlessness as distinguished from political disaffection was very common, the resident gentry at the head of their own tenantry and of hastily levied volunteers were usually able to cope with disturbances as they arose. The commercial policy of England-though dictated by much the same maxims as that of other countries-was grossly selfish and ruinous to Irish interests. As long as it was in force it was impossible for Ireland to become a really wealthy country, and its effects would have been still worse had it not been mitigated by a large smuggling trade in wool. On the other hand England asked from Ireland no direct tribute. She imposed upon her no part of the burden of her debt, and she undertook her whole naval defence. In the military defence of the Empire Ireland bore rather more than her share, as she provided a force of no less than 12,000 men, exclusively Protestant. This force was chiefly paid for out of the Irish hereditary revenue, and there were great abuses in the manner in which its officers were appointed and multiplied. Civil and ecclesiastical

IMPROVED STATE OF IRELAND

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patronage was also grossly abused, and some tens of thousands a year were expended on a most profligate Pension List. But the government of Ireland, considered as a whole, was a very cheap one; taxation was exceedingly light; for a long period it was almost wholly unchanged, and there were none of those exemptions in favour of the rich and to the detriment of the poor that were common on the Continent. The hearth tax, which was a duty of 2s. on every hearth, was the one tax which fell directly on the poor, and until near the close of the century the only cabins that were legally exempted from it were those of persons who lived upon alms and were unable to get a livelihood from work, and very poor widows.

The country, on the whole, was improving. The larger, part of Connaught, it is true, and some remote districts of other provinces lay almost absolutely outside British law; but there was a flourishing and civilised population in the great towns. Dublin ranked second among the cities of the Empire, and it had a brilliant and cultivated society. Stately mansions were arising; there was a considerable amount of active intellectual life, and throughout the more civilised portion of the country there were already clear signs of increasing though moderate prosperity. The relations of the creeds had greatly improved, and the Irish landlords and large middlemen had acquired a real influence over their tenants. As Protestants, as landlords, and as magistrates they had an almost despotic power. Thrown very much on their own resources they were a military class, and they put down disturbances with a high hand and with little regard for law, but the manner in which at the head of their own tenantry they kept Ireland quiet, combated the Whiteboy outbreaks, and at a later period organised and directed the volunteer movement, showed that they possessed governing qualities of no mean order. They

were ceasing to be an exotic class, and had taken root in the soil; they knew their people; they had qualities, and also failings, which were congenial to them, and they commanded a large amount of loyalty and devotion.

The government was a kind of tempered despotism, and the most vital reforms which had been introduced into the English Constitution after the Commonwealth and after the Revolution of 1688 had not been extended to Ireland. There was no Habeas Corpus Act. There was no Annual Mutiny Act. The judges were still removable at pleasure. There was no law obliging members of Parliament who received offices of profit under the Crown to vacate their seats. The Parliament sat for a whole reign, and that of George II. continued for no less than thirty-three years. The Lord Lieutenant was usually absent from the country about three-quarters of his time of office, and the practical government was in the hands of the Lords Justices, consisting of the Primate and a few great officials. The Primate was always an Englishman, and for many years Primates Boulter, Hoadly, and Stone had an almost despotic influence. The English Parliament claimed and sometimes exercised the right of legislating directly for Ireland without any concurrence of the Irish Parliament. The legitimacy of this claim was a matter of constant dispute. An Irish Statute of Henry VII. had, it is true, decreed that all English Statutes which were then in existence were to be of force in Ireland, but the school of Molyneux strenuously denied that the English Parliament could by its own authority bind Ireland. It, however, not unfrequently did so, and on matters of capital importance. Thus an English Act of 1690 disqualified Catholics from sitting in the Parliament of Ireland. An English Act of 1713 included Ireland in the Schism Act against Nonconformists. An English Act of