M'Cullagh's arguments--See _Note_ in
Appendix--Apparently low rents--Not really so--No capital--Little
skill--No good Agricultural Implements--Swift's opinion--Arthur
Young's opinion--Acts of Parliament--The Catholics permitted to be
loyal--Act for reclaiming Bogs--Pension to Apostate Priests
increased--Catholic Petition in 1792--The Belief Act of
1793--Population of Ireland at this time--The Forty-shilling
Freeholders--Why they were created--Why they were abolished--The cry
of over-population.
The great Irish Famine, which reached its height in 1847, was, in many
of its features, the most striking and most deplorable known to history.
The deaths resulting from it, and the emigration which it caused, were
so vast, that, at one time, it seemed as if America and the grave were
about to absorb the whole population of this country between them. The
cause of the calamity was almost as wonderful as the result. It arose
from the failure of a root which, by degrees, had become the staple food
of the whole working population: a root which, on its first
introduction, was received by philanthropists and economists with joy,
as a certain protection against that scarcity which sometimes resulted
from short harvests.
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