tain their people here_.
I cannot help mentioning on this occasion that, what with scarceness
of corn in the north, _and the loss of all credit there_, and by
the numbers that go, or talk of going, to America, and with the
disturbances in the south, this kingdom is at present in a deplorable
condition.'

In a statement previously made to the Bishop of London, the Irish
primate earnestly solicited his correspondent to use his influence
to prevent the Irish landlords from passing a law to strip the
established clergy of their rights with respect to the tithe of
agistment. They had entered into a general combination, and formed a
stock purse to resist the payment of tithe, except by the poor
tenants who tilled the soil, a remarkable contrast to the zeal of
the landlords of our own time in defending church property against
'spoliation' by the imperial legislature, and to the liberality with
which many of them are now contributing to the Sustentation Fund.
How shall we account for the change? Is it that the landlords of the
present day are more righteous than their grandfathers? Or is it that
the same principle of self-interest which led the proprietors of past
times to grind the tenantry and rob the Church, now operates in forms
more consistent with piety and humanity, and by its subtle influence
illustrates the maxim of the poet--

Self-love and social is the same.

However that may be, the primate contented himself in this letter
with a defence of the Church, in which he admitted matters of real
grievance, merely alluding to other grievances, 'such as raising
the rents unreasonably, the oppression by justices of the peace,
seneschals, and other officers in the country.'

From the pictures of the times he presents we should not be surprised
at his statement to the Duke of Newcastle, that the people who went
to America made great complaints of the oppressions they suffered, and
said that those oppressions were one reason of their going. When he
went on his visitation, in 1726, he 'met all the roads full of whole
families that had left their homes to beg abroad,' having consumed
their stock of potatoes two months before the usual time. During the
previous year many hundreds had perished of famine. What was the cause
of this misery, this desolating process going on over the plains of
Ulster? The archbishop accounts for it by stating that many persons
had let large tracts of land, from 3,000 to 4,000 acres, which were