export of woollens is exposed by the able author of the "Groans of
Ireland," who says: "It is certain that on the coasts of Spain, and
Portugal, and the Mediterranean, in the stuffs, etc., which we send
them, we, under all the difficulties of a clandestine trade, undersell
the French eight per cent., and it is as certain that the French
undersell the English as much--it has been said--_eleven per
cent_."[43] So that although the English manufacturer was unable to
compete with the Frenchman abroad, his narrow selfishness would not
permit Ireland to do so, although she was in a position to do it with
advantage to herself.

Impoverished by such legislation, the English colony itself, Protestant
and all as it was, had to lower its dietary standard and cultivate the
potato, or, at least, promote its cultivation by the use of it.

Another of the alleged causes for the poverty of the country, and the
consequent increase of potato culture, was absenteeism. In 1729 a list
of absentees was published by Mr. Thomas Prior, which ran through
several editions. The list includes the Viceroy himself, then an
absentee, which he well might be, at that time and for long afterwards,
as Primate Boulter was the ruler of Ireland. Mr. Prior sets down in his
pamphlet the incomes of the absentees, and the total amounts to the
enormous annual sum of £627,769 sterling, a sum in excess of the entire
revenue of the country, which, though increasing year after year, even
twenty-nine years afterwards was only £650,763.

Besides the exhausting drain by absentee proprietors, there was another
kind of absenteeism, namely, that of Englishmen who, through Court or
other influence, obtained places in Ireland, but discharged the duties
of them, such as they were, by deputy. Mr. Prior cites the following