sumptuary laws and a tax upon celibacy, the latter to weigh quite equally on each sex.[527] Sir William Petty does not mention the trade but he does mention the enormous amount of tobacco[528] consumed by the natives.  It is still a disputed question whether the so-called “Danes’ pipes,” of which I give an illustration, were made before the introduction of tobacco by Sir Walter Raleigh, or whether any other narcotizing indigenous plant may have been used.  Until one, at least, of these pipes shall have been found in a position which will indicate that they must have been left there at an earlier period than the Elizabethan age, the presumption remains in favour of their modern use.

[Illustration:  “DANES’ PIPES,” FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE R.I.A.]

I shall now give some brief account of the domestic life of our ancestors 200 years ago, and of the general state of society, both in the upper and lower classes.  Petty estimates the population of Ireland at 1,100,000, or 200,000 families.  Of the latter he states that 160,000 have no fixed hearths; these, of course, were the very poorest class, who lived then, as now, in those mud hovels, which are the astonishment and reprobation of foreign tourists.  There were 24,000 families who had “one chimney,” and 16,000 who had more than one.  The average number appears to be four.  Dublin Castle had 125, and the Earl of Heath’s house, twenty-seven.  There were, however, 164 houses in Dublin which had more than ten.

Rearing and tending cattle was the principal employment of the people, as, indeed, it always has been.  There were, he estimates, 150,000 employed in this way, and 100,000 in agriculture.  “Tailors and their wives” are the next highest figure—­45,000.  Smiths and apprentices, shoemakers and apprentices, are given at the same figure—­22,500.  Millers and their wives only numbered 1,000, and the fishery trade the same.  The woolworkers and their wives, 30,000; but the number of alehouse-keepers is almost incredible.  In Dublin, where there were only 4,000 families, there was, at one time, 1,180 alehouses and ninety-one public brewhouses.  The proportion was equally great throughout the country; and if we may judge from the Table of Exports from Belfast before-mentioned, the manufacture was principally for home consumption, as the returns only mention three barrels of beer to Scotland, 124 ditto to the Colonies, 147 to France and Flanders, nineteen to Holland, and forty-five to Spain and the Mediterranean.  There are considerable imports of brandy and wines, but no imports of beer.  We find, however, that “Chester ale” was appreciated by the faculty as a medicament, for Sir Patrick Dun, who was physician to the army during the wars of 1688, sent two dozen bottles of Chester ale, as part of his prescription, to General Ginkles, Secretary-at-War, in the camp at Connaught, in 1691.  He added two dozen of the best claret, and at the same time sent a “lesser box,” in which there was a dozen and a-half potted chickens in an earthen pot, and in another pot “foure green geese.”  “This,” writes the doctor, “is the physic I advise you to take; I hope it will not be nauseous or disagreeable to your stomach-a little of it upon a march."[529] It is to be supposed such prescriptions did not diminish the doctor’s fame, and that they were appreciated as they deserved.