. Since the
beginning of the century the condition of her people had slightly
improved, but in Munster and Connaught there was much terrible misery.
Though the severest provisions of the penal code were obsolete, the
protestants still remained a dominant caste. Roman catholics were shut
out from the bar and the army, and the sons of catholic squires for the
most part either spent their youth in idleness or served in foreign
armies. The great landowners were generally absentees and their estates
were rented by middle-men; the lands were let three or four deep, and
the peasants were crushed by exorbitant rents and unjust dealing. Their
burdens were increased by the tithe paid to an alien Church which was
still rather a secular than a religious power and, though more Irishmen
held preferments in it than formerly, had no place in the affections of
the people and neglected its duty, while the catholic priests, mostly
poor and ignorant men, were active, were adored by their flocks, and
ruled them with benevolent despotism. The tithe was specially burdensome
to the poor, both because the rich pasture-lands of the wealthy were
exempt from payment, while it was levied on little plots worked by the
plough or spade of the peasant, and because it was constantly farmed out
to men who made their bargains profitable by oppressing the needy with
unfair exactions. Chief among the causes of the misery of the peasants
was the extent to which arable land was converted into pasture. Commons
were unjustly enclosed, villages were depopulated, the starving peasants
were forced to flee to the mountains, and black cattle roamed at will
round the ruins of their deserted dwellings.

The despair of the wretched found expression in violence. In 1761 a
secret society called the Whiteboys was organised in Munster and parts
of Leinster to resist, or exact vengeance for, the enclosure of commons,
and unjust rents or tithe. The movement was agrarian, not religious,
though the Whiteboys were catholics, nor political. It was formidable,
for there was no Irish constabulary or militia. The Whiteboys would
gather in obedience to some secret mandate, march by night in large and
ordered companies, some to the land of one offender, others to that of
another, and, making the darkness hideous with their white smocks, fall
to houghing cattle, destroying fences, and spoiling pastures. Many cruel
deeds were done, though the murders were few. Stern acts were passed
ag