In Irish, not less than in American, affairs the policy of the ministry was decided by the king. Ireland was governed as a subject country. Shut out from the benefits of the navigation laws, she was only allowed such commerce as would not bring her into rivalry with England. Since the beginning of the century the condition of her people had slightly improved, but in Munster and Connaught there was much terrible misery. Though the severest provisions of the penal code were obsolete, the protestants still remained a dominant caste. Roman catholics were shut out from the bar and the army, and the sons of catholic squires for the most part either spent their youth in idleness or served in foreign armies. The great landowners were generally absentees and their estates were rented by middle-men; the lands were let three or four deep, and the peasants were crushed by exorbitant rents and unjust dealing. Their burdens were increased by the tithe paid to an alien Church which was still rather a secular than a religious power and, though more Irishmen held preferments in it than formerly, had no place in the affections of the people and neglected its duty, while the catholic priests, mostly poor and ignorant men, were active, were adored by their flocks, and ruled them with benevolent despotism. The tithe was specially burdensome to the poor, both because the rich pasture-lands of the wealthy were exempt from payment, while it was levied on little plots worked by the plough or spade of the peasant, and because it was constantly farmed out to men who made their bargains profitable by oppressing the needy with unfair exactions. Chief among the causes of the misery of the peasants was the extent to which arable land was converted into pasture. Commons were unjustly enclosed, villages were depopulated, the starving peasants were forced to flee to the mountains, and black cattle roamed at will round the ruins of their deserted dwellings.