What excessive liberality! They must have had plenty of money.
The plague, which no physician would attend, they dealt with by a
proclamation also, of which they seemed proud, for they published it
repeatedly in the journals of the time. Here is an extract: "The town of
Galway being at this time very sickly, the gentlemen of the county
_think proper_ to remove the races that were to be _run for_ at Park,
near the said town of Galway, to Terlogh Gurranes, near the town of
Tuam, in the said county." What humane, _proper-thinking_ "gentlemen"
they were, to be sure; and such precise legal phraseology! But their
enticing bill of fare contained more than the "races that were to be run
for;" it announced balls and plays every night for the entertainment of
the ladies.
The learned and kind-hearted Dr. Berkeley, Protestant Bishop of Cloyne,
under date 21st May, 1741, writes to a a friend in Dublin:--"The
distresses of the sick and poor are endless. The havoc of mankind in the
counties of Cork, Limerick, and some adjacent places, hath been
incredible. The nation probably will not recover this loss in a century.
The other day I heard one from the county of Limerick say, that whole
villages were entirely dispeopled.
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