population.[26] The Act was a temporary one, but was never afterwards
allowed to die out. It was renewed in various reigns, and is the
foundation of the Acts which were in force up to 1870 "for the more
effectual securing the payment of rents."

The land had been thrown into grazing to an alarming extent for years,
so that the acreage for producing grain and other such food was very
limited; the people fell into listless despair from what they had
endured in 1740, and did not cultivate the ground that was still left
for tillage. The Catholics were paralyzed and rendered unfit for
industrious pursuits, by an active renewal of the worst penal statutes.
The prospect of a war with Spain, which was actually declared in
October, 1739, was made the pretext for this new persecution, and all
the severities recommended by Primate Boulter were put into rigid
execution. These measures plunged the people into the deepest distress:
horror and despair pervaded every mind.[27]

Such was the state of Ireland in 1741, when bloody flux and malignant
fever came to finish what the Famine had left undone. These scourges,
unlike the Famine, fell upon the castle as well as on the hovel, many
persons in the higher ranks of life having died of them during the year;
amongst whom we find several physicians; the son of Alderman Tew; Mr.
John Smith, High Sheriff of Wicklow; Mr. Whelan, Sub-Sheriff of Meath;
the Rev. Mr. Heartlib, Castle Chaplain; Mr. Kavanagh, of Borris House,
and his brother; the son of the Lord Mayor-Elect; two judges, namely,
Baron Wainright and the Right Hon. John Rogerson, Chief Justice of the
King's Bench. The prisoners died in thousands in the jails, especially
poor debtors, who had been long incarcerated. In November, 1741, the
prisoners in Cork jail sent a petition to Parliament, in which they say,
that "above seven hundred persons died there during the late severe