Primate Boulter repeatedly complained to Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, and other ministers, that the Ulster farmers were deserting the country in large numbers, emigrating to the United States, then British colonies, to the West Indies, or to any country where they hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves to work for a number of years as slaves in payment of their passage out.  The desire to quit the country of their birth is described by the primate as a mania.  Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1728 he says:—­’We are under great trouble here about a frenzy that has taken hold of very great numbers to leave this country for the West Indies, and we are endeavouring to learn what may be the reasons of it, and the proper remedies.’  Two or three weeks later he reported to the Duke of Newcastle that for several years past some agents from the colonies in America, and several masters of ships, had gone about the country ’and deluded the people with stories of great plenty and estates to be had for going for in those parts of the world.’  During the previous summer more than 3,000 men, women, and children had been shipped for the West Indies.  Of these, not more than one in ten were men of substance.  The rest hired themselves for their passage, or contracted with masters of ships for four years’ servitude, ’selling themselves as servants for their subsistence.’  The whole north was in a ferment, people every day engaging one another to go next year to the West Indies.  ‘The humour,’ says the primate, ’has spread like a contagious distemper, and the people will hardly hear anybody that tries to cure them of their madness.  The worst is that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North, which is the seat of our linen manufacture.’

As the Protestant people, the descendants of the English and Scotch who had settled in the country in the full assurance that they were building homes for their posterity, were thus deserting those homes in such multitudes, their pastors sent a memorial to the lord lieutenant, setting forth the grievances which they believed to be the cause of the desertion.  On this memorial the primate wrote comments to the English Government, and, in doing so, he stated some astounding facts as to the treatment of the people by their landlords.  He was a cautious man, thoroughly acquainted with the facts, and writing under a sense of great responsibility.  In order to understand some of those facts, we should bear in mind that the landlords had laid down large portions of their estates in pasture, to avoid the payment of tithes, and that this burden was thrown entirely upon the tenants who tilled the land.  Now, let my readers mark what the primate states as to their condition.  He says:—­’If a landlord takes too great a portion of the profits of a farm for his share by way of rent (as the tithe will light on the tenant’s share), the tenant will be impoverished; but then it is not the tithe,