Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/344

After Limerick gentry, below them the mass of the Irish Catholics.

The condition of the Irish peasants during this period could hardly have been more miserable. The commercial policy of England did not directly injure them, but by checking the industrial development of Ireland, it injured them indirectly by tying them down in all their misery to the land and closing all means of escape. And but a scanty living could be got out of the land at this time by the Irish peasant. The great provision trade of the eighteenth century may have enriched individuals, but the peasantry suffered rather than gained by the conditions under which the staple trade of the country was carried on. This provision trade had begun to develop after the Restoration as a result of English commercial legislation, and it continued to flourish partly because pasture farming was particularly suited to Ireland, partly because the English Corn Laws rendered corn growing in Ireland absolutely unprofitable. During the whole of this period with which we are concerned there was a tendency in Ireland to turn large tracts of land into pasture, and side by side with this increase of pasture there went a decrease of tillage. This reckless turning of land into pasture led to many years of terrible famine, when 332