Note 3 — PREFACE.

Child’s Discourse upon Trade.—“No inconsiderable portion of the entire of Ireland has been confiscated twice, and perhaps thrice, in the course of a century.”—Lord Clare’s Speech on the Union.

The causes of absenteeship are, in fact, coeval with the first steps of English power in this country. “Those that were adventurers,” says Temple, “in the first conquests, and such others of the English nation as came over afterwards, took possession by former grants of the whole kingdom, and drove the Irish in a manner out of all habitable parts of it, and settled themselves in all the plains and fertile places of the country, especially in the chief towns, ports, and sea-coasts. It was no capital offence to kill any of the rest of the Irish; the law did neither protect their life nor revenge their death.”—History of Irish Rebellion. Here is the starting-post of absenteeism, pointed out by an English minister and historian.