was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant
families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by
the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these
Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and
descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such
desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James
II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small
territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The
Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the
most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined
against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to
worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from
1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public
employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of
agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left
Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they
turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of
Independence.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of
the Constitution," p. 253.

[5] J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited.

[6] MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35.

[7] The best modern account of the commercial relations of Great Britain
Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and