The loss must be upwards of 400,000, but supposing it 200,000,
(it was certainly more) it was too great for this ill-peopled country,
and the more grievous as they were mostly of the grown-up part of the
working people." "Whence can this proceed?" he asks; and he answers,
"From the want of proper tillage laws to guide and to protect the
husbandman in the pursuit of his business." [29]
This writer further says, the terrible visitation of 1740 and '41 was
the third famine within twenty years; so that in view of these and other
famines, since and before, Ireland might be not inaptly described as the
land of Famines. Almost the first object one sees on sailing into Dublin
Bay is a monument to Famine. This beautiful bay, as far-famed as the Bay
of Naples itself, has often been put in comparison with it. More than
once has it been my lot to witness the tourist on board the Holyhead
packet, coming to Ireland for the first time, straining his eyes towards
the coast, when the rising sun gave a faint blue outline of the Wicklow
mountains, and assured him that he had actually and really before him,
"The Holy Hills of Ireland." Nearer and nearer he comes, and Howth at
one side and Wicklow Head at the other define what he, not unjustly,
regards as the Bay.
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