Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/345

After Limerick the small portion of the country given over to supply, or when conditions in England prevented that country from exporting its usual amount of corn to Ireland. The small supply of corn led to very high prices in those days of localised markets, and gradually the mass of the people began to depend more and more on potatoes as their staple food. When the potato plots failed, as they frequently did, the people died by thousands, as they had nothing upon which to fall back. The famines of 1740 and 1741 were the most fearful on record In a curious pamphlet written at that time called "The Groans of Ireland," we are given a terrible description of it. "Want and misery," the author says, "are in every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying bodies, mankind the colour of the docks and nettles they fed on." Whole villages were depopulated, and thousands of people perished, some from actual starvation, others from disease brought on by unwholesome food.

There is no doubt that the system of exporting such vast quantities of provisions necessarily lowered the standard of living among the people. Archbishop King tells us that the entire profit of the provision trade went to the landlords and a few merchants "the rest being fed like 333