After Limerick
nearly as completely alienated from England as were their Catholic fellow-subjects. Through community of grievances Irish Protestants and Catholics began to be drawn more closely together. Towards the end of the century we see a disinclination on the part of the Protestants to enforce the Penal Laws, and it must be remembered that it was an Irish Protestant Parliament which took the first steps towards alleviating the condition of the Catholics. The time was soon to come when the whole Irish people, regardless of race and creed, were to unite together in resistance to English oppression and spoliation.
But of the whole body of Irish Protestants it was the Ulster Presbyterians who suffered most. There is no doubt that the restraints on Irish commerce and industry affected this class more than any other. From the very beginning of the eighteenth century, after the restrictions on the woollen trade, there was a great and continuous emigration of Protestants from the North of Ireland to America and the West Indies. The sturdy Protestant settlers of Ulster simply refused to submit to the new conditions of living in the country, and preferred emigration. Between 1725 and 1728 alone 4,200 men, women, and children were shipped off to the West Indies, over 3,000 of them going in the summer of
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