Page images
PDF
EPUB

articles of plantation, and these Irish gentlemen have under them about three thousand souls of all sorts.'

It will be remembered that the Irish gentlemen,' and those English who followed their example, continued to force a barbarous system of husbandry upon the poverty of their wretched retainers. Thus we find in Pinner; No. 160. Tirlagh O'Neil hath 4000 acres. He hath made no estates to his tenants, and they all do plough after the Irish manner?

career.

A century after the great rebellion, we find the aristocracy pursuing the same heartless and perilous A pamphlet, published in the year 1746, gives the following account of the landlords of the day; the same men, it will be observed, who plundered the clergy, for the good of the church :

[ocr errors]

Popish tenants are daily preferred, and Protestants rejected, either for the sake of swelling a rental, or adding some mean duties which Protestants will not submit to; but the greatest mischief in this way, is done by a class of men whom I will call land-jobbers. Land-jobbers have introduced for farmers the lowest sort of Papists, who were employed formerly as labourers, while the lands were occupied by substantial Protestants: but since potatoes have grown so much in credit, and burning the ground has become so fashionable, (a manure so easily and readily acquired,) these cottagers, who set no value on their labour, scorn to be servants longer, but fancy themselves in the degree of masters, as soon as they can accomplish

the planting an acre of potatoes. One of this description not being able singly to occupy any considerable quantity of ground, twelve or twenty of them, and sometimes more, cast their eyes on a plowland occupied by many industrious Protestants; who, from a common ancestor, planted there, perhaps, one hundred years before, have swarmed into many stocks, built houses, made various improvements, and nursed the land, in expectation of being favoured by their landlord in a new lease. These cottagers,-seeing the flourishing condition of this colony, the warm plight of the houses, but especially the strong sod on the earth, made so by various composts collected with much toil and care, and which secures to them a long continuance of their beloved destructive manure made by burning the green sward, -engage some neighbour to take this plowland, and all jointly bind themselves, to become under-tenants to the landjobber, and to pay him an immoderate rent. This encourages him to outbid the unhappy Protestants, and the great advance in the rent tempts the avaricious, and ill-judging landlord, to accept his proposal. The Protestants, being thus driven out of their settlements, transport themselves, their families, and effects, to America; there to meet a more hospitable reception amongst strangers to their persons, but friends to their religion and civil principles.'

Notwithstanding this dismal relation of the evil consequences of so mean a traffic (for the truth of which I appeal to all who know the condition of the

country), the present profit is so sweet, that many proprietors grudge the land-jobber his fag-rent, and are grown so cunning, that they set the land originally to the mean cottagers, and so take the whole price for a season: not once reflecting, that their sons will not have, by this ruinous practice, an estate near so valuable as that they received from their fathers.'

'Some endeavour to excuse themselves, by saying that Protestant tenants cannot be had. They may thank themselves if that be true; for they have helped to banish them, by not receiving them when they might. But it is to be hoped, we are not yet so distressed. Those who have the reputation of good landlords, and encouragers of Protestants, never want them: But there is a Protestant price, and a Popish price, for land; and he who will have valuable Protestants on his estate, must depart from his Popish price. Here I fear the matter will stick. It will be as hard to persuade a gentleman to fall from one thousand pounds a year to eight hundred, as it was to prevail on the lawyer in the gospel, to sell all, and save his soul.'

It is now easy to appreciate the policy of our great proprietors, in the eighteenth century. The established church was discountenanced for two reasons: its possessions attracted their cupidity; its principles laid the foundations of the public weal, in moderation on the part of the rulers, and, on the part of the people, in a regulated love of freedom, and a judgment exercised in the discrimi

nation of right and wrong. Protestants had a selfrespect, a taste for comfort and independence, which rendered them unacceptable: many of them fled from persecution; many of those who remained, deprived of the consolations of their own church, broken in spirit and fortune, and attracted by those gregarious sympathies which act so powerfully upon persons thus reduced, sunk into the religion, as well as the habits, of their new associates. The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, were cherished as a tenantry: their lords perceived, or imagined, many advantages, in the encouragement of a race, whose desires had never been suffered to rise above the cravings of animal nature. It is a curious circumstance, one indeed which deserves to be recorded in the natural history of the mind, that, while the aristocracy were thus multiplying their enemies, and banishing their protectors, they trembled with the fear of an insurrection, which, as appears from the journals of the Irish Commons, the priesthood was then organizing in favour of the Pretender. The great rebellion had warned them, that though the Irish might say with Zanga,

Born for your use, I live but to obey you;

they could, like him, treasure up the remembrance of all real or fancied indignities, against a day of devastating retribution. Yet, in the conflict of base passions, the thirst of sudden gain and barbarous authority prevailed over terror; and the daily hazard of a Servile War, was preferred to that

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small]

hare been readily found, which

en mese remarks a more pointed Unhappily, the annual cry of famine

enal disease which rises from three Date of our fertile island, and the annual emiom every port, of our Protestants to

, are facts which render it unnecessary to me the sketch to the present time: - the subtherefore be dismissed with one further observation Deprived, by various circumstances, o much of their local power, the great Irish proprietors have been diligent in building up authority elsewhere; and are now in possession of a commanding influence, in the cabinet and the legislature of the United Kingdom. Passing events seem tronder it probable, that en hem it will mainly aginu. Whether Ireland is, at length, to have the Nam An Engisi. connection; or whether Spenser's esdonor shall be accomplished, and

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

norence the disastrous consebannerror with Ireland. Which of the more likely? Already has a Derlemonary can mittee recorded its grave conviction, that the food of Irish misery is overflowing upon England; a flood, which has been caused by system hitherto adopted, and which will conour forth its desolating waters, unless that e for ever abolished. The course, therech may be pursued henceforward, is a

« PreviousContinue »