James the First resolved to make Catholic Ireland a Protestant country, and with this in view dispossessed the native chiefs in Ulster, giving their lands to Scottish and English lords on condition that they settle the territory with tenants from Scotland and England. Thus about 1610 many people from Scotia moved to Ulster, and from that time on were called Irish, though there was only a slight trace of Irish blood in their veins. It was nearly a century later that conditions arose which began to predispose them to emigration in large numbers. In 1698, on the complaint, from English manufacturers, of Irish competition, the Irish Parliament, a tool of the British crown, passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of Irish woolens, and another act forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any country save England. The linen industry was also discriminated against. These acts nearly destroyed the industry of Ulster, and aroused great discontent. Next the people were compelled to take the communion of the established church in order to hold office, which practically deprived them of self-government, as they were unwilling to renounce their native Presbyterianism for political ends. Soon after, their hundred-year leases began to run out, and when the land was auctioned off the low-living Irish could offer higher rents than they, and consequently they lost much of their land. The ensuing large emigration was thus the result of dissatisfaction due to an interesting combination of economic, political, and religious causes. It is said that in 1718 forty-two hundred of the Scotch-Irish left for America, and that after the famine of 1740 there were twelve thousand who departed annually. In the half century preceding the American Revolution, one hundred fifty thousand or more came to America. They were by far the largest contribution of any foreign race to the people of America during the eighteenth century, and constituted a strong element in the army at the time of the Revolution. At the time of the arrival of the Scotch-Irish in America, the lands along the Atlantic coast were already well occupied, and they were compelled to move on into the interior. The traditional religious exclusiveness of Massachusetts and the well-settled character of the country prevented them from settling in the eastern portions of that colony. Consequently they chose as their destination New Hampshire, Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Maine, and most of all Pennsylvania and the foothill regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. They were by nature typical pioneers, and gradually pushed their way into western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They were the one race sufficiently unified, endowed with the spirit of liberty, and scattered throughout the colonies, to serve as the amalgamating force binding all the other races into one—the American type.[16]