Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/347

After Limerick of the peasant. Archbishop King combats the idea, prevalent among the Protestant gentry, that the poverty of the people was due to their laziness and unwillingness to work. He writes that in his opinion it is much more due to "the cruelty of the landlords who rack their tenants so that they can neither render to God, to the publick, or their children what is due to them; and when I enquire (he goes on) how they came into that condition, the answer is, the Landlord came and took away all I had for his rent, and on inquiry I generally find it is so. I am persuaded neither the Peasants of France nor the Common Turks live so miserably as the Ter Tenants in Ireland &hellip; The Ter Tenants often hold from the fourth, who screws and sucks them to death, here is the originall of the Beggary of Ireland." Later on King writes that "one half of the people of Ireland eat neither bread nor flesh for one half of the year, nor wear shoes or stockins," and that the hogs and calves in England lived better than they. In 1720 he writes: "The cry of the whole people is loud for bread, God knows what will be the consequence, many are starved and I am afraid many more will." Unlike the peasant proprietor or the mediæval serf, the Irish peasant had no permanent interest in the soil and no security of 335