ecially in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. These
risings, as has been clearly proved by Mr. Lecky, had little, if any,
connection with either politics or religion. Their cause lay, as he
shows, on the very surface, in the all but unendurable misery in which
the great mass of the people were sunk.

[Illustration: RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. (_From an engraving by Jones
after Romney_.)]

Lord Chesterfield, one of the few Lord-Lieutenants who had really
attempted to understand Ireland, had years before spoken in
unmistakeable language on this point. Subletting was almost universal,
three or four persons standing often between the landowner and the
actual occupier, the result being that the condition of the latter was
one of chronic semi-starvation. So little was disloyalty at the root of
the matter, that in a contemporary letter, written by Robert Fitzgerald,
the Knight of Kerry, it is confidently asserted that, were a recruiting
officer to be sent to the district, the people would gladly flock to the
standard of the king, although, he significantly adds, "it seems to me
equally certain that if the enemy effects a landing within a hundred
miles of these people, they will most assuredly join them[16]."

The tithe system was another all but unendurable burden, and it was
against the tithe proctors that the worst of the Whiteboy outrages were
committed. That these outrages had little directly to say to religion
is, however, clear, from the fact that the tithe system was nearly as
much detested by the Protestant landowners as by their tenants. In the
north risings of a somewhat similar character had broken out chiefly
amongst Protestants of the lower classes, who gathered themselves into
bands under the name of "Oak boys" and "Steel boys." The grievances of
which they complained being, however, for the most part after a while
repealed, they gradually dispersed, and were heard of no more. In the
south it was otherwise, and the result has been that Whiteboy
conspiracies continued, under different names, to be a terror to the
country, and have so continued down to our own day.

[16] "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iv. p. 340.

As long as the volunteers remained embodied there was an all but
complete cessation of these local disturbances, but upon their
disbandment they broke out with renewed force. Many too of the
volunteers themselves, who, although disbanded, retained their arms,
began to f