It will be at once seen, by glancing at those tables, that between the year 1764 and the union, a great change had taken place in the articles of provisions exported. At the commencement of that period, Ireland was, to a great extent, dependent on Great Britain for her supply of cerials; before its termination, she furnished England with a very large quantity of grain; but it, will also be perceived, that during the same time, the exportation of beef, hides, and tallow, had enormously decreased. Those alterations might have been the effects, either of augmented wealth causing an increased home consumption of animal food, or of a diminution of live stock. If the former were the operating cause, the number of black cattle should have remained, at least, undiminished, and the quantity of animal food used by the population, ought to have augmented. But so far from either circumstance having happened, that the stock of cows rapidly decreased in number, and the breadth of land applied to pasturage every year became less extended. "From the commencement of the last century," says Frazer,* the well-known writer on the Irish fisheries, "immense quantities of beef, pork, tallow, and butter were sent from Ireland to those countries (the American plantations) for the support of the infant colonies, as well as large quantities exported for the supply of the British navy, and her increased commerce. But, on the rapid extension of tillage, the grazing lands were in great quantities broken up for the production of grain. Even in the maritime counties of Cork, Waterford, and Galway, from which ports, particularly the former, the greatest exports of provision were made, large tracts of pasture ground were converted into tillage, from which circumstance the places from whence the supply of cattle was to be obtained, being removed, they could not be brought to market to the merchant,

so that he could not afford to supply his customers, the West Indian planters and navy contractors, at the usual rates; in consequence of which, the planters obtained the greatest part of their provision from America, and the royal navy and commercial interest found the enhanced price a heavy burthen on the nation, and the business of navigation. "In every part of the kingdom," says Arthur Young, writing in 1778, "the common Irish have all sorts of live stock, the tables, already inserted, show this in respect of cows. I should add, pigs are yet more general, and poultry in many parts of the kingdom, especially in Leinster, are in such great quantities as amazed me, not only cocks and hens, but geese and turkeys." In about thirty years after this statement was made, Joshua Kirby Trimmer published an account of the condition of agriculture in the south of Ireland; and describing the filthy hut of the labourer as at once a dwelling, a stable, and a stye, says, "the other side of the cabin is inhabited by the hogs and poultry, and sometimes, but very seldom, by a cow." He adds, "that these (the small farmers) form a very numerous class in the southern part of Ireland; and a larger share of the agriculture of the country may be said to be in their hands than in those of the substantial farmers; with their scanty and slender means, it cannot be expected to prosper much. Their stock consists of one horse, a small car, and perhaps half a dozen sheep, besides some hogs, and in some cases by a cow." And this was written of a country in which, but thirty years before, cattle were abundant, and where every labourer possessed, at least, a cow.§

During the period cattle were so rapidly diminishing in number, it will be seen that the quantity of butter exported, constantly and largely increased; and, when it is considered, that the supply decreased and population greatly augmented, the conclusion

373, and Part the Second, p. 27.

becomes inevitable that the home consumption of this necessary article, one of the luxuries of the poor man's board, enormously diminished. Milk alsoat one time a mensal staple of every cottage in Ireland—must in a great degree have ceased to have been used as an article of diet. The period from the commencement to the termination of the first American war was one of the most disastrous to Ireland, during the last century. The embargo, which prevented trade with France and Spain, and the diminished demand for Irish provisions by the Plantations, induced at once individual distress and commercial embarrassment; yet, even during that protracted season of national misfortune, we have the evidence of the most accurate of inquirers, Arthur Young, that the peasantry of Ireland consumed, as their ordinary diet, meal, milk, butter, and fowl, in addition to potatoes, aud that they possessed live stock in abundance.

In 1805, twenty-seven years after Young's travels were published, Newenham made the following statement relative to the food of the Irish peasantry ::- "Instead of England being competent to maintain a greater proportionate population than Ireland, we should find that independently of the acknowledged superiority of the latter, with regard to the natural and general fertility of the soil, the nature of the food on which the great majority habitually subsist, together with other peculiar circumstances, render it competent to support an infinitely more dense population than the former."

"Potatoes, it is well known, are the great article of food in Ireland, bread in England; comparatively speaking a

very small quantity of animal food is consumed in that country, a very great one in this. Much of that kind of food is saved there by religious fasts, a very small quantity here. By the lowest class, in this country, it is eaten once a week, by the lowest class in that country never. In England, that most numerous class, next above the lowest, eat flesh-meat three times, or at least twice a week. In Ireland the same class, which is in proportion more numerous than here, do not, generally speaking, eat it once a month; a great majority of that class do not eat it oftener than six times a year. Substantial farmers and country artificers in this country live chiefly on animal food, the same description of people in most parts of that country live, chiefly, on potatoes and milk.”

Thus, during the era of Irish independence, in the short period of about twenty years, meal, milk, butter, flesh-meat, and fowl ceased to be consumed by the peasantry, and even by the farmers of Ireland. From being a prosperous and comfortable population they changed into the most wretched and impoverished people in Europe from being well and abundantly fed, potatoes alone became their sole resource for supporting existence.*

The line drawn through the table of imports divides it into two equal portions of 18 years before, and 18 after the declaration of Independence in 1782. A comparison of the consumption in each of those periods of the articles, which are usually adopted as a criterion of advancement or decline in national prosperity, will afford some curious results.†

is alleged, was carried by murder, cruelty, and corruption. Will England tacitly admit the charge? Will she not make, by the work of the sculptor, even, a silent protest against its truth.

The essays of Alderman Staunton and the Rev. Mr. Godkin, each contain a chapter, on the means by which the union was carried, remarkably contrasted, both in spirit and language. The alderman neither makes any assertion, nor offers any remark on the subject. He, merely, takes extracts from some of the orations delivered during the union discussions; and quotes a passage from Plowden's history, and another from Mr. O'Connell's repeal speech in the corporation. The Rev. Mr. Godkin, on the contrary, rushes forward with all the undisciplined violence of a recruit, exposing himself to danger by his ignorance, and his friends to defeat by his intemperance. "My object," says that Rev. gentleman, "in referring to the rebellion, is not to awaken party feeling, but rather a salutary horror of civil war; and to shew, that it was 'got up' by a wicked government, to enable them to carry the union.

This,

I trust, has been sufficiently proved." Proved! there never was a fragment of evidence, an iota of testimony adduced to support the charge-a charge unsustained alike by the declaration of a witness, or the probability of a circumstance, which would convict the meanest felon of the pettiest crime. No speaker in parliament, even among the excited opponents of the union, dared to make such an accusation. No calumniator, without its walls, ventured to insinuate such crime. Debased as was the moral tone of the period, still there was not such a contempt of truth. Plunket raved about the ministry having fomented the embers of an expiring rebellion; he did not allege, that they originally kindled the flame. Grattan talked of the treason of the minister, against liberty, being worse than the treason of the rebel against the minister; but he did not assert that the minister fomented rebellion against the crown. Yet, if there had been room, even for a suspicion of its truth, how

violent would have been the denunciation of the one, how tremendous the Philippics of the other. The orations of Cicero against Catiline, Verres, and Antony, would have been translated into phrensied bombast, and spouted with melo-dramatic exaggeration. If there were no other proof than the negative one, that on this subject, Bushe and Parsons were silent, Gray and Saurin mute, it would be sufficient to stamp it as an atrocious calumny.

But, even if the calumny of "Repeal" were the truth of History, still the government which fomented conspiracy, until it eventuated in rebellion, would have been, morally speaking, innocent. There is not a jury in Europe or America but would have given a verdict in their favour, nor a court of justice in the world in which they would not have been acquitted; even the enlightened panel which found Bellingham guilty, would have pronounced them insane. If there be a particle of truth in the indictment fiated by the Conciliation-hall committee, the cabinet in 1797-8, must have been Bedlam-the ministers lunatics—their designs the effects of hallucination-their actions the result of phrenzy. To fully understand this part of the subject, it will be necessary to glance at the state not only of Great Britain, but of Europe, at the close of the last century, and for this purpose we shall extract a passage from a pamphlet. which, as it fell, we believe, still-born from the press, possesses at least the advantage novelty.*

of

"If the British ministry fostered treason to cause rebellion, they must have commenced that perilous experiment in 1796, when the Irish Union first became an armed association, and continued it through 1797 and the earlier part of 1798."

The year 1796 is distinguished in the annals of Great Britain by the treacherous neutrality of Prussia, and the active hostility of Spain; by the defeat and destruction of four armies of her Austrian ally in Italy, and the subjugation of that country by Napoleon.