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  The grievances of which they complained being, however, for the most part after a while repealed, they gradually dispersed, and were heard of no more.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 fall under new influences, and to lose their earlier reputation.  “What had originally,” in Grattan’s words, “been the armed property of Ireland, was becoming its armed beggary.”  A violent sectarian spirit, too, was beginning to show itself afresh, although as yet chiefly amongst the lowest and most ignorant classes.  A furious faction war had broken out in the North of Ireland, between Protestants and Roman Catholics.  The former had made an association known as the “Peep-of-day boys,” to which the latter had responded by one called the “Defenders.”  In 1795 a regular battle was fought between the two, and the “Defenders” were defeated with the loss of many lives.  The same year saw the institution of Orange Lodges spring into existence, and spread rapidly over the north.  Amongst the more educated classes a strongly revolutionary feeling was beginning to spread, especially in Belfast.  The passionate