lantation acres; (3) that half whatever quantity was
leased, should be reclaimed in twenty-one years; (4) that such bog
should be at least one mile from any city or market-town. Alas, how
utterly prostrate the Catholics must have been, when this was regarded
as a concession to them! Yet it was, and one of such importance, that
"in times of less liberality it had been repeatedly thrown out of
Parliament, as tending to encourage Popery, to the detriment of the
Protestant religion;" and to counter-balance it, the pension allotted to
apostate priests in Anne's reign was, in the very same Session of
Parliament, raised from L30 to L40 per annum, by the Viceroy, Lord
Townsend.[52] The wretched serfs were of course glad to get any hold
upon the soil, even though it was unprofitable bog, and largely availed
themselves of the provisions of the Act. Ten or twelve years later, we
find Arthur Young speaking with much approval of the many efforts that
were being made, in various parts of Ireland, to reclaim the
bogs--efforts resulting, no doubt, in a great measure, from this Bill.
In the process of reclaiming the bogs, the potato was an essential
auxiliary.

But of all the means of increasing the growth of that renowned esculent
in Ireland, the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 must, at least in more
recent times, be accorded the first place. That Act, it is said, was the
result of the fears excited in England by the French Revolution. Whether
this was so or not, the concessions it made were large for the time; and
its effect upon potato culture in Ireland is unquestionable. Dr.
Beaufort, in his Ecclesiastical Map, gives our whole population in 1789
as 4,088,226. Sir Henry Parnell says the Catholics were, at this time,
at least three-fourths of the population.[53] And this agrees with the
estimate which the Catholics themselves made of their numbers at the
period; for, in a long and remarkable petition, presented to the House
of Commons in January, 1792, they say: "Behold us then before you, three
millions of the people of Ireland." These three millions became, by the
Bill of '93, entitled to the elective franchise; or, as the Bill itself
more correctly expressed it, "such parts of all existing oaths," as put
it out of their power to exercise the elective franchise, were repealed.
The Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of this important
privilege, which they had not enjoyed since the first year of George the
Second's reign--a p