The burthen of all the pamphlets of this period dealing with the land
question, was an attack on landowners for their excessive desire to
throw land into grass. One published in 1727 has this passage: "By
running into the fancy of grazing after the manner of the Scythians,
they [the landowners] are every day depopulating the country."[10] In
another, printed in the same type, and apparently by the same hand, we
read: "To bestow the whole kingdom on beef and mutton, and thereby drive
out half the people, who should eat their share, and force the rest to
send sometimes as far as AEgypt for bread to eat with it, is a most
peculiar and distinguished piece of public economy of which I have no
comprehension."[11] At this time there was extreme want in the country,
on account, it was thought, of the great quantity of land which, within
a short period, had been put out of tillage; graziers (whom the writer
calls "that abominable race of graziers") being mad after land then as
they are now. But there were other causes. William the Third, at the
bidding of the English Parliament, annihilated the flourishing woollen
manufacture of Ireland; her trade with the Colonies was not only
cramped, but ruined, by the navigation laws in force; which, amongst
other things, enacted that no colonial produce could come to Ireland
until it had at first entered an English port, _and had been landed
there_.
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