We shall see later that, even after the passage of the act of Congress of 1819—which directed the collectors of customs at the seaports of the United States to forward quarter-yearly lists of all the passengers arriving at their respective ports to the state department at Washington—the number of immigrants reported was for many years very considerably less than that of those who actually came here. One careful and reliable writer, Dr. Chickering, estimates the number of those not accounted for at fifty per cent. of those reported. Bearing this in mind it will seem almost certain that, before the time when returns of immigrants were required by law, their numbers were underestimated in a far greater proportion. Large numbers of people left Ireland for America between 1790 and the beginning of the War of 1812. During the century preceding the year first named half a million of Irishmen—more than the number of Huguenots who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes—went to that country and joined her armies to escape the English penal laws and avenge the violation of the Treaty of Limerick. This fact is attested by the French military records. But after the outbreak of the Revolution in France the flight of the “Wild Geese” was checked, and comparatively few entered the Revolutionary or Imperial armies. Meanwhile the situation in Ireland was almost as gloomy as before. Though as a consequence of the American and French revolutions the penal laws had been somewhat relaxed, and in 1793 Catholics had been allowed to vote at parliamentary elections, they were still persecuted and harassed in almost every conceivable manner by the Loyalist faction. In Armagh county murders, house burnings, and still more abominable crimes were of constant occurrence, and many thousands of the people were driven from their homes, some taking refuge in the South, some flying to Scotland, and a large number coming to America. An idea of the condition of things at that time in some parts of Ireland may be formed from reading the declaration of Lord Gosford, governor of Armagh county, and thirty magistrates, issued on Dec. 28, 1795. “It is,” they said, “no secret that a persecution accompanied with all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, which have in all ages distinguished that calamity, is now raging in this county. Neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence is sufficient to excite mercy or afford protection. The only crime which the unfortunate objects of this persecution are charged with is a crime of easy proof, indeed, it is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic faith.” The Presbyterians, who had for a long time been excluded from power and position by the “Sacramental Test Act,” and many of whom had, during the eighteenth century, emigrated to America, were also much dissatisfied with their condition and that of the mass of their countrymen.