1 84 A HISTORY OF 



meath. Of these, Roscommon was completed by 

 December 1831. In the National Library is a volume 

 of manuscript materials for the survey of the county 

 of Tipperary, compiled about 1833, which had been 

 entrusted to W. S. Mason. 



Many of these volumes were defective, and would 

 have required considerable amendment, but only those 

 for the counties of Dublin and Cork were publicly 

 attacked, the former, on the ground of its being a 

 mere skeleton, and not a real survey of the county ; 

 the latter on the ground of religious intolerance. 

 Lieutenant Joseph Archer's account of Dublin is stated 

 to be an agricultural survey, but in the year after the 

 publication of the volume, Hely Dutton's Observations, 

 framed on similar lines, appeared. It forms a second 

 volume for the county of Dublin, and affords much 

 fuller details. In a short address to the reader, the 

 Dublin Society hoped that the example afforded by 

 the compiler would create emulation, and that others 

 might be found who would make similar remarks on 

 the surveys of other counties. 



The Rev. H. Townsend's account of the county 

 of Cork was also challenged, and in the Haliday collec- 

 tion (1811, dcccclxxxix. 3, 4, 5) is a Letter to the 

 Dublin Society from the most Rev. Dr. Coppinger, 

 Bishop of Cloyne ; occasioned by observations and mis- 

 statements by Tozvnsend. There is also a copy of the 

 same letter, with supplement, &c., which was answered 

 by Observations on Dr. Coppinger's Letter to the Dublin 

 Society, by the Rev. Horace Townsend. Dr. Cop- 

 pinger accused him of representing the Roman Catholic 

 clergy as bigoted and opposed to improvement, keeping 

 their flocks in ignorance, and " preying on the vitals 

 of the poor." If not expressed in actual words, it 

 was certainly implied, he asserted, in passages concern- 



