And his majesty's goodness in giving them some extraordinary relief on this occasion of their present great distress would undoubtedly make them _more active to retain 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 stocked with cattle, and had no other inhabitants on their land than so many cottiers as were necessary to look after their sheep and black cattle, '_so that, in some of the finest counties, in many places there is neither house nor cornfield to be seen in ten or fifteen miles' travelling_, and daily in some counties many gentlemen, as their leases fall into their hands, tie up their tenants from tillage; and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into foreign service at the hazard of their lives if taken, because they cannot get land to till at home.' My readers should remember that the industrious, law-abiding, bible-loving, God-fearing people, who were thus driven by oppression from the fair fields of Ulster, which they had cultivated, and the dwellings which they had erected, to make way for sheep and cattle--because it was supposed by the landlords that sheep and cattle paid better--were the descendants of British settlers who came to the country under a royal guarantee _of freeholds and permanent tenures_.
Let them picture to their minds this fine race of honest, godly people, rack-rented, crushed, evicted, heart-broken--men, women, and children--Protestants, Saxons, cast out to perish as the refuse of the earth, by a set of landed proprietors of their own race and creed; and learn from this most instructive fact that, if any body of men has the power of making laws to promote its own interest, no instincts of humanity, no dictates of religion, no restraints of conscience can be relied upon to keep them from acting with ruthless barbarity, and doing more to ruin their country than a foreign invader could accomplish by letting loose upon it his brutal soldiers.