CHAPTER XIV.

ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.


Let us, then, endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about
race and religion in dealing with this Irish land question. Identity
of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the
Ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was
their interest to banish them--to substitute grazing for tillage, and
cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry.

The letters of Primate Boulter contain much valuable information on
the state of Ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations
of the land question, which, I fancy, will be new and startling to
many readers. Boulter was lord primate of Ireland from 1724 to 1738.
He was thirteen times one of the lords justices. As an Englishman and
a good churchman, he took care of the English interests and of the
establishment. The letters were written in confidence to Sir Robert
Walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended
for publication. An address 'to the reader' from some friend, states
truly that they give among other things an impartial account of 'the
distressed state of the kingdom for want of _tillage_, the vast sums
of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal
calamities thereon, the want of trade and the regulation of the
English and other coins, to the very great distress of all the
manufacturers,' &c. They show that he was a man of sound judgment,
public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in
which he lived. His evidence with regard to the relations of landlord
and tenant in Ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment.