lisk at Castletown
(_Note_)--Price of Wheat--Bread Riots--Gangs of Robbers--"The
Kellymount Gang"--Severe punishment--Shooting down Food-rioters--The
Lord Lieutenant's Address to Parliament--Bill "for the more
effectual securing the payments of rents and preventing the frauds
of tenants"--This Bill the basis of legislation on the Land Question
up to 1870--Land thrown into Grazing--State of the
Catholics--Renewal of the Penal Statutes--Fever and bloody
flux--Deaths--State of Prisoners--Galway Physicians refuse to attend
Patients--The Races of Galway changed to Tuam on account of the
Fever in Galway--Balls and Plays!--Rt. Rev. Dr. Berkeley's account
of the Famine--The "Groans of Ireland"--Ireland a land of
Famines--Dublin Bay--The Coast--The Wicklow Hills--Killiney--Obelisk
Hill--What the Obelisk was built for--The Potato more cultivated
than ever after 1741--Agricultural literature of the time--Apathy of
the Gentry denounced--Comparative yield of Potatoes a hundred years
ago and at present--Arthur Young on the Potato--Great increase of
its culture in twenty years--The disease called "curl" in the Potato
(_Note_)--Failure of the Potato in 1821--Consequent Famine in
1822--Government grants--Charitable collections--High price of
Potatoes--Skibbereen in 1822--Half of the superficies of the Island
visited by this Famine--Strange apathy of Statesmen and Landowners
with regard to the ever-increasing culture of the Potato--Supposed
conquest of Ireland--Ireland kept poor lest she should rebel--The
English colony always regarded as the Irish nation--The Natives
ignored--They lived in the bogs and mountains, and cultivated the
Potato, the only food that would grow in such places--No recorded
Potato blight before 1729--The probable reason--Poverty of the
English colony--jealousy of England of its progress and
prosperity--Commercial jealousy--Destruction of the Woollen
manufacture--Its immediate effect--"William the Third's
Declaration--Absenteeism--Mr. M'Cullagh's arguments--See _Note_ in
Appendix--Apparently low rents--Not really so--No capital--Little
skill--No good Agricultural Implements--Swift's opinion--Arthur
Young's opinion--Acts of Parliament--The Catholics permitted to be
loyal--Act for reclaiming Bogs--Pension to Apostate Priests
increased--Catholic Petition in 1792--The Belief Act