THE ROYAL DUBLIN SOCIETY 5 



for the widespread want and destitution prevalent at 

 this juncture. Robert, first Viscount Molesworth, who 

 was a close personal friend of William Molyneux, 

 and to whom Swift dedicated the fifth of the Drapier's 

 Letters, was author of a very remarkable pamphlet 

 Some Considerations for Promoting Agriculture and 

 Employing the Poor (1723) which Mr. Lecky observes 1 

 " exposed with a skilful and unsparing hand the gross 

 defects of Irish agricultural economy, and at the same 

 time proposed a series of remedies, which, if they had 

 been carried out, might have made Ireland a happy and 

 prosperous country." Among the Haliday collection 

 of pamphlets in the Royal Irish Academy's Library are 

 a number of essays and papers dealing with Irish trade, 

 manufactures, and husbandry in the first half of the 

 eighteenth century, which will well repay perusal by 

 those making such subjects a special study. They 

 show that in the south of Ireland farms were being 

 largely consolidated and lesser tenants were being 

 turned out, while the north groaned under the burden 

 of excessive rents, and everywhere discontent became 

 rife. 



At the time of the accession of King George the 

 Second to the throne, there was much cultivated society 

 in Dublin, and throughout Ireland there were many 

 thoughtful men, anxious to improve the condition of 

 their country, and to raise the status of the agri- 

 cultural population, on which its prosperity so largely 

 depended. As a result of these conditions, a small 

 band of patriotic reformers, actuated by the purest 

 and noblest motives, felt that a time had arrived at 

 which they might unite in an effort to promote and 

 improve the system of husbandry, the manufactures, 



1 Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, i. 302. 



