under date 21st May, 1741, writes to a a friend in Dublin:--"The
distresses of the sick and poor are endless. The havoc of mankind in the
counties of Cork, Limerick, and some adjacent places, hath been
incredible. The nation probably will not recover this loss in a century.
The other day I heard one from the county of Limerick say, that whole
villages were entirely dispeopled. About two months since I heard Sir
Richard Cox say, that five hundred were dead in the parish, though in a
county I believe not very populous. It were to be wished people of
condition were at their seats in the country during these calamitous
times, which might provide relief and employment for the poor. Certainly
if these perish the rich must be sufferers in the end." The author of a
letter entitled "The Groans of Ireland," addressed to an Irish. Member
of Parliament, thus opens his subject:--"I have been absent from this
country for some years, and on my return to it, last summer, found it
the most miserable scene of universal distress that I have ever read of
in history: want and misery in every face; the rich unable almost as
they were willing to relieve the poor; the roads spread with dead and
dying bodies; mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles they fed
on; two or three, sometimes more, going on a car to the grave for want
of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches
where they perished. This universal scarcity was ensued by fluxes and
malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts: whole
villages were left waste by want, and sickness, and death in various
shapes; and scarcely a house in the whole island escaped from tears and
mourning. The loss must be upwards of 400,000, but supposing it 200,000,
(it was certainly more) it was too great for this ill-peopled country,
and the more grievous as they were mostly of the grown-up part of the
working people." "Whence can this proceed?" he asks; and he answers,
"From the want of proper tillage laws to guide and to protect the
husbandman in the pursuit of his business." [29]