“July 12th: Sallied from my inn, which would have made a very passable castle of enchantment in the eyes of Don Quixote in search of adventures in these noted baronies, of which I had heard so much.” He did not find, however, as much difference in the husbandry as he expected, but the people appeared more comfortable. Potatoes were not the common food all the year through, as in other parts of Ireland. Barley bread and pork, herrings and oatmeal, were much used. The cabins were generally much better than any he had yet seen; larger, with two and three rooms in good order and repair, all with windows and chimneys, and little sties for their pigs and cattle. They were as well built, he says, as was common in England. The girls and women were handsomer, having better features and complexions than he saw elsewhere in Ireland. Young was a poor authority on this point, however; for he says, in the most ungallant manner, that “the women among the lower classes in general in Ireland are as ugly as the women of fashion are handsome.” A remark equally composed of truth and falsehood: a handsome Irish lass being as easily found in any townland as in any Dublin drawing-room. Young was a good man and a good farmer, but we fear in this case his cockney prejudices deceived him.
Understanding that there was a part of the barony of Shellmaleive inhabited by Quakers, rich men and good farmers, our tourist turned aside to visit them. A farmer he talked to said of them: “The Quakers be very cunning, and the d——l a bad acre of land will they hire.” This excited Young’s admiration for these sagacious Friends. He found them uncommonly industrious, and a very quiet race. They lived very comfortably and happily, and many of them were worth several hundred pounds.
Returning through Wicklow to Dublin, he passed through the Glen of the Downs and the Dargle, as we have already noticed. His description of the scenery of these noted spots is picturesquely written, but too long to quote. July 18th, he set out for the North. Leaving Drogheda, he made a visit to the Lord Chief Baron Foster at Cullen. This “great improver,” “a title,” he says, “more deserving estimation than that of a great general or great minister,” had reclaimed in twenty years a barren tract of land, containing over 5,000 acres, which, when Young visited it, was covered with corn. In conversation with him, the Chief Baron said that in his circuits through the North of Ireland he was on all occasions attentive to procuring information relative to the linen manufacture. It had been his general observation that where linen manufacture spread tillage was very bad. Thirty years before, the export of linen and yarn had been about £500,000 a year; it was then £1,200,000 to £1,500,000. In 1857, the export of linens, according to McCulloch, was £4,400,000. In 1868, there were 94 flax-spinning factories in Ireland, driving 905,525 spindles, employing about 50,000 (vide I. N. Murphy’s valuable work, Ireland—Industrial, Political, and Social, London, 1870).
In conversation upon the “Popery” laws, Young expressed his surprise at their severity. The Chief Baron said they were severe in the letter, but were never executed. It was rarely or never, he said (he knew no instance), that a Protestant discoverer got a lease by proving the lands let under two-thirds of their real value to a Catholic. But it is plain the Chief Baron took a more roseate view of the situation than it deserved; the explanation of the last-mentioned circumstance being, as we have seen in the case of Mr. Marly, already mentioned, that the landlord generally took good care to keep the rent well up to the two-thirds value. The penalties for carrying arms or reading Mass were severe, the Chief Baron admitted, but the first was never executed for merely poaching (rare clemency!), and as to the other, “Mass-houses were to be seen everywhere.” The Chief Baron did justice, Young says, to the merits of the Roman Catholics, by observing that they were in general a very sober, honest, and industrious people. Arthur Young winds up this conversation with Chief Baron Foster, however, with the following spirited remark, which shows that he had not listened in vain to the great orator of that age: “This account,” he says, “of the laws against them brought to mind an admirable expression of Mr. Burke’s in the English House of Commons: connivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of liberty.”
The Chief Baron was of opinion that the kingdom had improved more in the last twenty years than in a century before. The great spirit began, he said, in 1749 and 1750. With regard to the emigrations, which then made so much noise in the North of Ireland, he believed they were principally idle people, who, far from being missed, benefited the country by their absence. They were generally dissenters, he said; very few Churchmen or Catholics.
Coming to Armagh, Young found the “Oak Boys” and “Steel Boys” active in that part of the country. He attributes their rise to the increase of rents and the oppression of the tithe-proctors. The manufacture of linen was at its height; the price greater, and the quantity also. A weaver earned from one shilling to one shilling and fourpence a day, a farming laborer eightpence. The women earned about threepence a day spinning, and drank tea for breakfast.
July 27th, in the evening, he reached Belfast. He gives an animated description of the town and its trade and manufactures. “The streets,” he says, “are broad and straight, and the inhabitants, amounting to about fifteen thousand, make it appear lively and busy.” The population of Belfast is now probably one hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was then already noted for its brisk foreign trade with the Baltic, Spain, France, and the West Indies. The trade with North America was greatly affected by the contumacious behavior of the “rebels.”
Thence our tourist wended his way through the North, through the mountains and moors of Donegal, and down the wild west coast of Sligo and Galway. Here he describes a wake, and the “howling” of the “keeners” “in a most horrid manner,” in a tone of alarm and amazement which would put to shame the stage “English officer” of some of our modern Irish melodramas.
Continuing his route through Clare and Limerick, he arrived at Cork September 21st. This is his description of the city one hundred years ago:
“Got to Corke in the evening, and waited on the Dean, who received me with the most flattering attention. Corke is one of the most populous places I have ever been in; it was market-day, and I could scarce drive through the streets, they were so amazingly thronged; the number is very great at all times. I should suppose it must resemble a Dutch town, for there are many canals in the streets, with quays before the houses. Average of ships that entered in nineteen years, eight hundred and seventy-two per annum. The number of people in Corke, upon an average of three calculations, as mustered by the clergy, by the hearth-money, and by the number of houses, sixty-seven thousand souls, if taken before the first of September; after that, twenty thousand increased.”