were never out of it, altogether bear still very heavy on the poor
people, and subject them to situations more mortifying than we ever
behold in England. The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman
Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever
concerns the poor to no law but that of his will ... A long series of
oppressions, aided by very many ill-judged laws, have brought landlords
into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals
into that of an almost unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is
despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed,
the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of
_written_ liberty." And again, this enlightened Protestant English
gentleman says of the Irish landlord, that "nothing satisfies him but an
unlimited submission."[47]

Forty years later, some of their more obvious, not to say essential
duties, were brought under the notice of Irish landlords, but in vain.
The writer quoted above on the Famine of 1822 says: "It is therefore a
duty incumbent on all those who possess property, and consequently have
an interest in the prosperity of this country, to prevent a recurrence
of this awful calamity [the Famine], and to provide for those persons
over whom fortune has placed them, and whom they should consider as
entrusted to their care, and entitled to their protection; and this can
only be successfully carried into execution by their procuring and
substituting other articles of food, so as to leave the poor only
partially dependant on the potato crop, for their support."[48]

Some Acts of Parliament, without perhaps intending it, gave a further
impulse to potato cultivation in Ireland. As if the violation of the
treaty of Limerick by William the Third; the exterminating code of Anne;
its continuance and intensification, under the first and second George