[34] Report of the Committee for the “Relief of the Distressed Districts in Ireland,” appointed at a general meeting, held at the City of London Tavern, on the 7th May, 1822.

[35] Impartial Review.  Miliken, Dublin, 1822.

[36] Report of Parliamentary Committee.

[37] Amongst the means resorted to at this time to raise funds for the starving Irish was a ball at the Opera House in London, at which the King was present, and which realized the large sum of L6,000.  This piece of information the Irish Census Commissioners for 1851, curiously enough, insert in that column of their Report set apart for “Contemporaneous Epidemics.”

[38] The chief part of this L60,000 is still under the management of the “Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor of Ireland.”

[39] The following extract from a letter of Mr. Secretary Legge, dated London, May 4, 1740, and addressed to Dublin Castle, expresses very naively an English official’s feelings about the terrible frost and famine of that year:—­“I hope the weather, which seems mending at last, will be of service to Ireland, and comfort our Treasury, which, I am afraid, has been greatly chilled with the long frost and embargo.”—­Records, Birmingham Tower, Chief Sec.’s Department, Box 10.

[40] Speech, p. 26; quoted by Plowden, vol. i., p. 253.  Note.

[41] Answer to Address of Commons, 2nd July, 1698.

[42] Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland, App., p. 149.

[43] Groans of Ireland, p. 20.

[44] Mr. Prior’s Pamphlet was dedicated to the Viceroy, Lord Carteret, and both Houses of Parliament, which proves how certain he was of his facts and statements.

[45] See Note A in Appendix, for a fuller discussion of the question of Absenteeism.

[46] “The present miserable state of Ireland.”  How like the Ireland of the other day!

[47] Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland, App., p. 40.

[48] Impartial Review, p. 3.

[49] History of the Penal Laws.

[50] 13 & 14 Geo. II, cap. 35.

[51] 11th & 12th Geo. II, cap. 21.

[52] Plowden.

[53] History of the Penal Laws.

[54] By the 1st Geo. II, cap. 9, sec. 7, it was enacted that no Papist could vote at an election, without taking the oath of supremacy—­an oath which no Catholic could take.  Primate Boulter thought he saw a disposition on the part of the English colony to make common cause with the natives in favour of Irish, interests, and taking alarm at the prospect of such a dreadful calamity, he got the Ministers to pass this law.  It is said it was carried through Parliament under a false title, being called a Bill for Regulating, etc.; but it would have passed under any title.

[55] The feelings of the Irish Catholics for these concessions are curiously illustrated, by an inscription on the Carmelite Church in Clarendon Street, Dublin, in which the year 1793 is called, “the first year of restored liberty,” and George the Third is proclaimed as the “best of kings.”  Here is the full inscription:—­