Old Virginia and her neighbours

392 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.Ulster. That province had been the most neglectedpart of the island, a wilderness of bogs andfens ; they transformed it into a garden. Theyalso established manufactures of woollens andlinens which have ever since been famous throughoutthe world. By the beginning of the eighteenthcentuiy their numbers had risen to nearly a million.Their social condition was not that of peasants;they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans.In a document signed in 1718 by a miscellaneousgroup of 319 men, only 13 made their mark, while306 wrote their names in full. Nothing like thatcould have happened at that time in any otherpart of the British Empire, hardly even in NewEngland.When thesepeople began coming to America,those families that had been longest in Irelandhad dwelt there but for three generations, andconfusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclaturewhich couples them with the true Irish. Theantipathy between the Scotch-Irish as a group andthe true Irish as a group is perhaps unsurpassedfor bitterness and intensity. On the other hand,since love laughs at feuds and schisms, interraarriao-esbetween the colonists of Ulster and thenative Irish were by no means unusual, and instancesoccur of Murphys and McManuses ofPresbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster toallude to Presbyterians as " Scotch," to RomanCatholics as " Irish," and to members of the Englishchurch as " Protestants," without much referenceto pedigree. From this point of view theterm " Scotch-Irish " may be defensible,provided