They preferred to
turn their attention to improve its quality and productiveness, and to
take measures for its protection from frost, rather than to abandon its
culture. And, indeed, it was as much a matter of necessity as choice
that they did so. The potato, on a given area, supplied about four times
as much food as any other crop; and, from the limited breadth of land
then available for tillage, the population would be in continual danger
of falling short of food, unless the potato were cultivated to a large
extent. The agricultural literature of the country from 1741 until the
arrival of the celebrated traveller, Arthur Young, in Ireland, consisted
chiefly of fierce attacks upon graziers--of a continual demand for the
breaking up of grass lands into tillage--of plans for the establishment
of public granaries to sustain the people in years of bad harvests, and
of the results of experiments undertaken to improve the culture of the
potato. The writers on these subjects also frequently denounced the rich
for the wretchedness and misery to which they allowed the labouring poor
to be reduced. The author of a pamphlet, which went through several
editions, thus attacks them, in the edition of 1755:--"The want of trade
and industry causes such inequality in the distribution of their (the
people's) property, that while a few of the richer sort can wantonly
pamper appetites of every kind, and indulge with the affluence of so
many monarchs, the poor, alas! who make at least ninety-nine of every
hundred among them, are under the necessity of going clad after the
fashion of the old Irish, whose manners and customs they retain to this
day, and of feeding on potatoes, the most generally embraced advantage
of the inhabitants, which the great Sir Walter Raleigh left behind
him.
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