woollen manufacture of Ireland; her trade with the Colonies was not only cramped, but ruined, by the navigation laws in force; which, amongst other things, enacted that no colonial produce could come to Ireland until it had at first entered an English port, and had been landed there.  Thus, whilst the fact that vast tracts of the soil had been put out of cultivation compelled the country to buy food abroad, the unjust and selfish destruction of her trade and commerce by England left her without the money to do so.

The people being in a state of great destitution, the author of the “Memorial” quoted above, said, there should be raised by taxes on a few commodities, such as tea, coffee, etc., L110,000.  L100,000 to buy 100,000 barrels of wheat, and L10,000 premium to those who would import it.  To this the Author of the Answer replies:—­“By talking so familiarly of L110,000 by a tax upon a few commodities, it is plain you are either naturally or affectedly ignorant of our present condition, or else you would know and allow, that such a sum is not to be raised here without a general excise; since, in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than England ever did in the height of the war.  And when you have brought over your corn, who who will be the buyers?  Most certainly, not the poor, who will not be able to purchase the twentieth part of it....  If you will propose a general contribution in supporting the poor on potatoes and buttermilk till the new corn comes in, perhaps you may succeed better, because the thing at least is possible.”

Potato culture was clearly on the increase; the corn crop, however, was still looked to as the food of the nation.  But if the growing of potatoes was on the increase, it seems to have partly arisen from the very necessity of the case.  There was not land enough under tillage to give food to the people, it was laid down for grazing.  Mountains, poor lands, and bogs were unsuitable to graziers, nor yet would they yield wheat, nor, in many instances, oats, or any white crop whatever; but the potato was found to succeed very well in such places, and to give a larger quantity of sustenance than such land would otherwise yield.  Its cultivation was therefore spreading, but spreading, it would seem, chiefly amongst the poor Celtic natives, who had to betake themselves to the despised wastes and barren mountains.  In the rich lowlands, and therefore amongst the English colony (for whom alone all the publications of those times were intended), the potato was still a despised article of food.  And to this the latter part of the above-cited passage points.  The proposal to sustain the people on potatoes and buttermilk until the new corn should come in, is evidently an ironical one, really meant to convey the degradation to which grazing had brought the country.  Seventy or eighty years later the irony became a sad and terrible reality.