for there was no desire to keep the Catholics from emigrating; quite the
contrary; but they were utterly ignored in the periodical literature of
the time, except when some zealot called for a more strict enforcing of
the laws "to prevent the growth of Popery." And this view is supported
by the writer quoted above, who says it would be for the "Protestant
interest" to encourage tillage. Primate Boulter, bewailing the
emigration which resulted from the famine of 1728, "the result of three
bad harvests together," adds, "the worst is that it affects only the
Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North."[13] He, in his tender
anxiety for the Protestant colony, purchased corn in the South to sell
it cheaply in the North, which caused serious food riots in Cork,
Limerick, Waterford, Clonmel, and other places. These riots were of
course quelled, and the rioters severely punished. The broad rich acres
of the lowlands were in the hands of the Protestants; and these being
specially suited to grazing were accordingly thrown into grass, whilst
the Catholic Celts planted the potato in the despised half-barren wilds,
and were increasing far more rapidly than those who were possessed of
the choicest lands of the kingdom.

But a terrible visitation was at the threshold of Celt and Saxon in
Ireland; the Famine of 1740 and '41. There were several years of dearth,
more or less severe between 1720 and 1740. "The years 1725, 1726, 1727,
and 1728 presented scenes of wretchedness unparalleled in the annals of
any civilized nation," says a writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_.[14]
A pamphlet published in 1740 deplores the emigration which was going
forward as the joint effect of bad harvests and want of tillage: "We
have had," says the author, "twelve bad harvests with slight
intermission." To find a parallel for the dreadful famine which
commenced in 1740, we must go back to the close of the war with the
Desmonds.[15] Previous to 1740 the custom of placing potatoes in pits