completely ascertained, much nearer to five than to four millions.* In the relative magnitudes of the two great British Islands, either the Doctor is widely mistaken, or I have made an erroneous representation of them from a careful mensuration of the best maps of these islands, the larger of which I have supposed to bear to the other a proportion not so great as that of three to one † That the latter contains less waste land in proportion to its area is a well known truth, observed particularly by * Sir R. Musgrave's reasoning (Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland, p. 523, 524) would tend to prove the population of Ireland to be prodigious. He calculates that forty-nine thousand men, inhabitants of the county of Wexford, were at once in arms against government; that these fall short by twenty thousand of the whole number of men in the county (for he could not have reckoned women and children as fighting men) and that the county of Wexford contains about a thirtyfourth part of the whole population of Ireland. By this calculation there should be considerably above two millions of men in Ireland, of the military age, and consequently above ten millions of people of both sexes and all ages. A most absurd calculation! + See Gordon's Terraquea, vol. iii. p. 74, 268. The ingenious and learned narrater of transactions at Killala, hereafter to be quoted, says in one place, (p. 12.) that the wild district of Erris, a frightful tract of bog and mountain, is tolerably well peopled. And in another, (p. 106) "the popu ❝lation in the mountainous parts of the county of Mayo much "exceeds what the country, from its haggard appearance, would be thought capable of sustaining." This is the case in all the wild traets throughout Ireland. Arthur Young; and the counties in the north of Ireland are in general much more populous than that of Wexford. As I have had ample opportunity of observing the manners and habits of the Irish peasantry, I should not think the matter altogether miraculous, nor even be much surprised, if this island should be found to have. more than quadrupled its population since the year 1677, supposing Sir William Petty, (who then stated the number of its inhabitants at eleven hundred thousand) to have committed no error in his computation.*--Poverty prevents not marriage among the peasants of this kingdom. They almost all enter young into the ties of matrimony, apparently with an uncommon trust in Providence for the maintenance of their children, contenting themselves with such houses, accommodations, and food, as would be quite inadequate to the support of life in English people of the same class. In such circumstances of existence, apparently inimical to the increase of the human species, they seldom fail of a numerous offspring, who grow to maturity with a hardiness of constitution seldom elsewhere surpassed. * The population of the Russian Empire is found to be doubled every forty nine years (W. Tooke's view of the Russian Empire, book 3. sect. 1.) and I can hardly conceive the Russians to be more prolific than the Irish peasantry. T With the learned Doctor I fully agree in another position, that, whatever may be the population of this kingdom, or the proportion of protestant and Romanist inhabitants, with respect to number, the protestant government of Ireland is completely adequate to the support of its authority against all internal enemies, without any assistance from the great sister island, Britain. But this must be on supposition that the Irish government was a stable administration, not fluctuating by the erroneous policy or caprice of British ministers, nor shackled or counteracted in its operations by their influence. On this proviso I should not doubt of the efficiency of the Irish administration for the above purpose, with even a mere pageant of state at its head; but against a powerful army of invading enemies, aided by the disaffected at home, it could not, without British assistance, be supposed able to maintain its ground, more than the British government against a proportionally powerful invading force, if Britain were in like manner stocked with a starving peasantry, oppressed with enormous rents, unable by the nature of their tenures to acquire a secure property for their families by any labour, and unfortunately habituated to regard foreign powers as their friends, and the protectors of their religion, in prejudice to their own government. The same learned writer seems to insinuate that the rebel lion might, or would have been prevented, if the Irish administration had not been shackled or influenced by British interference.* I also think his assertion well founded, that the rebellion was suppressed by the sole strength of the Irish government without being under any obligation for assistance in troops or money from Britain; but I deny that the whole Romanists of the counties of Carlow, Kildare, and Wicklow, were united in host with the Wexfordian rebels. † In the county of Carlow the inhabitants arewell known to have remained quiet except in one extremely ill concerted and unsuccessful attack, that of the chief town. The insurgents of Kildare acted altogether separately from those of Wexford, with whom they had no communication, except an intercourse of messages. The same was the case with those of Wicklow, except that a great body of them joined in the attack of Arklow, and that afterwards, in the decline of the rebellion, a number of them retired by Tinnehely and Kilcavan to Vinegar-hill. So that whatever was performed by rebels within the bounds of the county of Wexford, previously to their dislodgment from Vinegar-hill, was performed by Wexfordians alone, as the taking of Enniscorthy and Wexford, the attack of Newtownbarry, the See Dr. Duigenan's pamphlet, p. 8o, Dublin edition. 1 defeat of Walpole, and the formidable assault of Ross. If, however, these Wexfordians had improved without delay the advantages for which they were in a considerably degree indebted, at first to the smallness and mismanagement, and afterwards to the mismanagement alone, of the troops or force opposed to them, they would doubtless have been joined by most at least of the Romanists of the neighbouring counties, and the consequences would, in all probability have been calamitous in the extreme to the south of Ireland at least. Of this we might be able to form some conception from the miseries occasioned by the short-lived rebellion, of which I have been treating, in the territories immediately affected by it. Of these miseries I have already treated so far as my plan allowed, and have observed that those, which loyalists underwent, arose not always from rebels alone. I shall only add at present, that the system of espionage, or the encouragement and reception of private information, with the utter concealment of the names of the informers, from the persons accused, which system had from a most lamentable necessity, been adopted by government before the rebellion, was, without any necessity that I can perceive, continued by some after its suppression. How far the supposition or imputation of disloyalty against persons possessed of any valuable effects, |