The problems set by the Norman conquest of Ireland which began under Henry II cannot be properly appreciated if they are viewed in isolation. Similar problems had been set by the Norman conquest of England only a hundred years earlier; similar problems existed in Wales. In England, however, the conquest had been both rapid and complete, and problems which were to last throughout the middle ages in Ireland were solved in England by the merging of the two peoples in a relatively short time. Moreover, in England no such clash of laws as was to come about in Ireland had followed the conquest: the Anglo-Saxons had possessed a well-developed system of local administration which was taken over with little or no modification by the Norman kings.

Under the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, there were two ways by which a judicial rent might be fixed for an agricultural holding in Ireland to which the act applied. One way was by the landlord, or tenant, or both jointly, applying to the land commission court or to the civil bills court of the county; the court then, after considering all the circumstances of the case, fixed a ‘fair’ rent. The other way was by landlord and tenant making a written agreement out of court as to what was the ‘fair’ rent of the holding, and lodging the agreement in court; the agreement, after three months, was filed by the court as the judicial rent of the holding, without any enquiry being made by the court. In both cases the rent was fixed for a period of fifteen years, at the end of which period the landlord or tenant was at liberty to apply to the court to have the rent fixed for a second term of fifteen years or to lodge a fresh agreement in court for such purpose; a tenant whose rent had been fixed in court for the first term might, if he wished, lodge an agreement for the second term, and conversely a tenant whose rent had been fixed by agreement for the first term might have it fixed in court for the second term. Much has been written about the fixing of judicial rents in court; little comment has been made on the fixing of rents by agreement out of court, and this is not surprising, since it was essentially a silent process, involving no public proceedings. Yet this latter process was a very important part of the whole operation of the rent-fixing acts in Ireland.

So far as is known there was no precedent in the experience of England and Ireland for population increase as rapid or as sustained as that which appears to have begun in England in the 1750s and in Ireland some thirty years later If the available figures can be trusted the number of Englishmen (and Welshmen) more than doubled between 1750 and 1831 and the number of Irish living in Ireland doubled between 1780 and 1841. In England the rapid growth of population provides an essential part of the explanation of the coming of the industrial revolution. In Ireland it did even more than largely determine the magnitude of the catastrophe of the Famine. It was unbridled population growth, succeeded by famine, which incised on the minds of the Irish and their rulers unforgettable lessons which guided their conduct in the following century and ensured that Irish economic and social development, moulded by the exigencies of a declining population, should provide a unique model for the historian—and one which he has examined all too little.

It is tantalising that the elucidation of the dimensions and the structure of a problem of such overriding importance should be so elusive. The elusiveness, of course, must largely be attributed to the non-existence or the inadequacy of the appropriate statistics. It was not until half a century after the growth of population had begun that parliament at last insisted that the people be counted regularly.

It is difficult to discuss the influence of any national stock on American history without being involved in the larger question of which is the more important, environment or heredity. Naturally, to the American historian, environment is all important, and in the concept of the frontier developed by F. J Turner and others, the pioneer was wholly a child of the American continent. This view of the pioneer, however, originates less in history than in the eighteenth-century idea of a natural man. The real frontiersman was himself an immigrant or the child of immigrant parents, practising a European religion, and attempting to realize European ideals in a new country.

The Scotch-Irish were the dominant strain in the frontier population in all the colonies south of New York. Emigration from Ulster was as much a feature of American history in the eighteenth century as Irish catholic emigration in the next and had a much greater effect on the development of the country. From 1718, they had poured into America, mainly through Philadelphia, at the rate of about 4,000 a year. From there they made their way to the frontier and then down the lateral valleys of the Appalachians into the Valley of Virginia and piedmont North and South Carolina.

July 1863 was the turning point of the American civil Avar. Prospects of ultimate victory for the north improved greatly that month, when General Lee's thrust into Pennsylvania was repulsed at the battle of Gettysburg, and Vicksburg, last confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, fell after a long siege. Yet during the sultry week of 12 July 1863 the most violent race riots of American history took place in the streets of New York, touched off by enforcement of a conscription act which congress had passed four months earlier How many negroes were lynched by white rioters and their bodies borne away on the waters surrounding Manhattan Island can never be known. But between twelve and fifteen hundred white persons died in this civil war within a civil war, most of them slain by police and soldiers charged with quelling the upheaval.

If newspaper accounts, official reports, and other sources of information agree upon any point about the draft disorders, it is that almost all the participants were Irish. ‘The immediate actors in the late riots in this city, got up to resist the draft and to create a diversion in favor of the southern rebellion, were almost exclusively Irishmen and catholics’ , wrote Orestes A. Brownson, America's leading convert to the Catholic Church.

The scope of this study may be briefly indicated. The central subject is the conditions of labour in the spinning mills and weaving factories of the Belfast linen industry during the period 1850—1900. This involves a consideration of such questions as the number of hours worked, the dangers to health and life associated with the character of the processes, and state and private attempts directed towards the amelioration of conditions. As an account of working conditions would be unreal without some reference to earnings, an attempt has been made to indicate the course of monetary and real wages during the period. As some knowledge of the general development of the industry is essential to an understanding of the problems investigated, the paper begins with an outline of this development.

Though the organisation of the linen industry was affected by the advent of capitalism before the end of the eighteenth century, it was not until 1829 that there was any fundamental change in technique. In that year Mulholland of Belfast, inspired by John Hinds, substituted the manufacture of linen for that of cotton and applied steam power to flax spinning, by the wet process.1 This individual act of enterprise was the prelude to a half century of rapid development. Another decide elapsed before any attempt was made to apply steam power to linen weaving and even then progress was slow.

The restoration settlement has long been the subject of controversy Petty in his Political anatomy calculated that by 1672 catholics had recovered a little less than a third of the ‘good land‘ of Ireland. Several alternative estimates were made at the time, such as that of Richard Lawrence, whose Interest of Ireland, published in 1682, put the catholic share at a little more than a fifth of the whole. But Petty remained the generally accepted authority until he was challenged by Butler, who estimated that ‘ at the accession of James II only at the outside one-seventh or one-eighth of the total area of the island remained in the possession of catholics ’

The Irish record commission of 1810-30 is of interest as being the first determined effort on the part of government to deal in a thorough manner with the problem of the Irish public records, giving due consideration to the requirements of historical scholars as well as of lawyers and litigants. Attention had previously been directed on several occasions to the deterioration of the records owing to the lack of proper storage, and to the difficulty of Consulting them owing to the almost entire absence of guides and indexes, and efforts had been made by various individuals to remedy this State of affairs, but the interest of government had been spasmodic, and the recommendations of the several committees of inquiry appointed during the eighteenth Century had remained unimplemented.

It may perhaps be useful for me to express at the outset my belief that the documents which explain the actions of the eighth earl of Kildare, who served either as justiciar or as deputy lieutenant of Ireland during the years 1477–92 and 1496–1513, still await a scientific and objective examination : the interpretation of them has so far been too much the result of an attitude of parti pris, and it has made the earl&s relations with the English government unintelligible. This note is, however, intended to do no more than resolve some perplexities that have gathered round his attainder in the Irish parliament in 1495 at tne instigation of Sir Edward Poynings, the then deputy.

The letter that follows was written by Edward Blake, a member of the committee of the Irish parliamentary party, to Thomas A. Dickson, formerly a nationalist member of parliament, and since 1892 the principal organiser of the liberal home-rule vote in Ulster The importance of the document lies in the fact that it formed the basis of one of the most serious charges ever levelled against the Irish party in the course of its history. At the general election of 1895 the deep differences of opinion that had been dividing the anti-Parnellites almost since the time of the split came suddenly to a head. The majority section, headed by the chairman of the party, Justin McCarthy, and by John Dillon, insisted upon the right of the committee of the party to direct the nationalist effort in the election campaign. This claim was denied by the minority, led by T M. Healy, which asserted that the committee was unrepresentative and that it allowed too little freedom to the constituencies in the selection of candidates. As the election date drew near, there were frequent clashes between the supporters of the two wings of the party at the various conventions that were held in all parts of the country.