CATHOLIC farmers increasingly displaced Protestants as tenants of the big landlords in the 18th century because they were able to pay higher rents, according to a new book.
In the process, they created a rural, Catholic middle class characterised by landholding and by having sons in the priesthood, according to the book, The Robinsons of North Kildare, by Mr James Robinson.
The Penal Laws had a catastrophic effect on land ownership by Catholics by, for instance, forcing them to bequeath their land equally to all their sons, resulting in uneconomical holdings, Mr Robinson writes. But they gradually gained what he calls a "competitive edge" in leasing land.
The Catholic farmer's ability to pay more rent than his Protestant counterpart was explained in these terms by one observer at the time in the early 18th century: "An Irish Papist is much abler to pay rent for a farm than a Protestant of equal ability with the Roman, by reason that a Roman and his whole family can live upon potatoes and buttermilk the whole year through for to make a rent, which the Protestant cannot do, for the Protestants must have beef and bread and much, better clothes than the Romans.
Mr Robinson continued: "Eventually, the competitive Catholic edge in bidding for leases was to undermine the Protestant tenants on many estates once landlords adopted a strictly commercial approach."
Rents and produce prices rose throughout the 18th century and "landlords were compelled to cash in on this boom by leasing to Catholic tenants and thereby removing the predominant Protestant middleman". These Catholic tenants in turn leased their land to sub-tenants "thus creating a Catholic middleman class".
Nevertheless, many visitors to the country commented on the appalling poverty in which the majority of the population lived.