iscopalians during the
eighteenth century was closely connected with the migration of the
Scotch to America.

For one hundred years the Scotch multiplied in Ulster and had no
dealings with the remnants of the Irish, whom they crowded into the
barren hills and whom they treated like savages. They retained their
purity of race, and although when they came to America they called
themselves Irish and were known as Irish wherever they settled, yet they
had no Irish blood except that which entered into their composition
through the Irish migration to Scotia fifteen hundred years before.

Yet, though they despised the Irish, they could not escape the unhappy
fate of Ireland. The first blow came in 1698, nearly one hundred years
after their settlement. English manufacturers complained of Irish
competition, and the Irish Parliament, a tool of the British crown,
passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of Irish woollens, and
another act forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any country
save England. Their slowly growing linen industry was likewise
discriminated against in later years. Presbyterian Ulster had been the
industrial centre of Ireland, and these acts nearly destroyed her
industry. Next Queen Anne's Parliament adopted penal laws directed
against Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and the Test Act, which
compelled public officials to take the communion of the Established
Church, deprived the entire Scotch population of self-government.
Nevertheless they were compelled to pay tithes to support the
Established Church to which they were opposed. Lastly, the hundred-year
leases of the tenants began to run out, and the landlords offered
renewals to the highest bidders on short leases. Here the
poverty-stricken Irish gained an unhappy revenge on the Scotch who had
displaced them of their ancestral lands, for their low standard of
living enabled them to offer rack-rents far above what the Scotch could
afford. No longer did religion, race pride, or gratitude have a part in
holding Ulster to Protestant supremacy. The greed of absentee landlords
began to have full sway, and in the resulting struggle for livelihood,
hopeless poverty was fitter to survive than ambitious thrift.

The Scotch tenants, their hearts bitter against England and aristocracy,
now sought a country where they might have free land and
self-government. In 1718 it is stated that 4200 of them left for
America. After the famine of 1740 there were 1