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The Miseries and Beauties of Ireland (Author: Jonathan Binns)
chapter 18
GENERAL REMARKS
Within the limits of a concluding chapter but little can be said respecting the causes which have conduced to the remarkable disparity that exists between the state of this country and that of the land of which I have attempted to give some account in the preceding pages. To detail (as would be necessary, in order to exhibit these causes) the history of Ireland from the period of its connexion with Great Britain as a conquered country, to the present moment, at which, nominally at least, it bears the character of an integral portion of the empire, would be to enter upon a subject of mighty difficulty and of unmanageable extent. A few observations, however, may be offered, even within the contracted space which
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remains, on some of the remedies proposed for the national restoration of one of the finest countries in the world.
Ireland presents to those who contemplate her peculiar condition, a striking and fearfully disgraceful anomaly. Possessing a singularly fertile soil, capable of abundantly repaying the labour bestowed upon it, she also possesses a population depressed by more than ordinary destitution, and dishonoured by a long catalogue of more than ordinary crimes. This state of things, so truly deplorable, whether regarded in a moral or a physical point of view, is exclusively referrible to the systematic course of partiality, oppression, and cruelty, with which her people have been treated through successive centuries; and if it were my object to represent the injuries that have been done, rather than to dwell upon the prospect of good things to come, I might, by referring to authentic sources of information, draw a series of terrific pictures of persecution, intolerance, and desolation, to which it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find parallels in the history of any
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nation not absolutely barbarous.28 It becomes us, who are in some degree responsible for the misdeeds of our predecessors, and are certainly bound to repair the evils they have effected; it becomes us, I repeat, to bear constantly in mind, that ever since her connexion with Great Britain, Ireland has been a grievously oppressed country; that for the ignoble purpose of extinguishing her religion,29 and seizing upon the property of its votaries, she has been deprived of those political privileges which were her right, and which, sooner or later, she will possess; that so far from the Irish being naturally a turbulent people, they are made so by circumstances under the control of England; and that dissatisfied as they are and have been, the wrongs they have endured, the insults they have suffered, would have justified a course of conduct
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incomparably more violent than any which Ireland, even in her most excited moments, in her wildest paroxysms of resentment, has displayed. The terms of the Union, let us remember, promised an equality of civil rights, and, until those terms are rigidly complied with, Ireland never will, and Ireland never ought to be, a contented country. Convinced, however, that a brighter day is dawning — nay, has already dawned — I would drop the veil over the frightful transactions of by-gone times, and look cheerfully and confidently towards the future.
As it is not unusual to hear the Irish charged with the several vices of idleness, cruelty, and recklessness, it may be well perhaps to keep these allegations in view, in the course of the following observations.
As to the charge of idleness. When it is considered that they receive comparatively no reward for their labour; that the market is constantly overstocked; that the more they exert themselves, the more they increase the surplus labour, already too great; and that the disappointments they so
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repeatedly encounter, have a tendency to destroy their energy, and to produce indifference or despair, the wonder is, not that they are idle, but that they are not something infinitely worse. It is, in fact, utterly impossible, under the present state of things, for the Irish poor to be anything but idle. This, however, is a well-established fact, that as soon as they have any prospect of being compensated for their labour, it is applied with skilful and enthusiastic industry. Let the character of Irish labourers be sought in the large seaports; let an appeal be made to the extensive English farmers, who are glad to avail themselves, in harvest-time, of their valuable services. From either of these quarters, an answer, far from discreditable to the objects of the inquiry, will be returned. In confirmation of this opinion I would take the liberty of introducing a passage from the letter of one of the most spirited and experienced of British agriculturists, William Stickney, of Ridgmont, in Holderness. I could not refer to higher authority. This gentleman has for many years annually employed, during the harvest-season,
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a number of Irish labourers; and this is the judgment he has formed respecting them. "For honesty," says he,"sobriety, industry, gratitude, and many other good qualities (when working by the piece, or at good wages), they far surpass the same class of English labourers. When the Irish begin to arrive in this country, it is sometimes two or three weeks before the harvest commences, and if they do not immediately find work, many of them are without the means of subsistence. Under these circumstances, they frequently apply to me to lend them a few shillings, which I do in small sums, amounting, in the whole, to several pounds, and this without any injunction that they should work it out with me. They give a verbal promise that they will return the loan before they leave the neighbourhood; and I do not remember an instance in which they have ever deceived me; they have invariably returned the money lent, with a deep sense of gratitude. Admiring the Irish labourers, as I have reason to do, I am always glad to see them when they make their appearance. In the summer season I frequently
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have from thirty to fifty, or more, lodging upon my premises; several of them working for other persons in the neighbourhood, and many of them entire strangers to me; yet I would trust my life and my property with them much sooner than I would with the same class of English labourers; and I consider my premises more secure from depredation under their protection, than I should with any other strangers."
If the outrages committed by the Irish people are incapable of vindication, facts and circumstances may at least be produced in extenuation of the excesses into which they are hurried. On an impartial consideration of some of these particulars, it will, I think, be apparent, that the very worst of our fellow-subjects in "the sister isle" are certainly not more cruel and vindictive than any other people would be under similar treatment; and that the outrages of which they are guilty, are, in fact, for the most part, the natural growth of the policy adopted towards them. We often, for instance, hear of murders being perpetrated upon such as have taken land from which
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others have been ejected; and it is possible that Englishmen, knowing that similar effects do not follow similar causes in this country, may be disposed to consider a case clearly made out against the Irish, on the strength of this single peculiarity in their history. Between the respective systems of taking land in England and in Ireland, there is, however, a material difference; a difference so material as to render any analogy that may be drawn, a very imperfect and fallacious means of reasoning. An English farmer, when ejected, having little or no difficulty in obtaining another farm, has little or nothing to dread; in Ireland, when a man is ejected, it is next to impossible for him to find a farm at liberty. What is he to do? Money he has none — and without a farm he is placed in a situation that offers him three alternatives; he must either beg, or steal, or starve with his family; for, as yet, the reader will bear in mind, no legal provision for the destitute has been provided.30
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In this manner have great numbers been turned adrift — not because they were in arrear of rent — not because they had transgressed the rules of their lease — but simply because they happened to profess a religious or political creed at variance with that of a capricious landlord. It cannot surely be denied, that, systematically and wickedly oppressed as the Irish labourers are, to rise in self-defence, however frightful may be the results of such resistance, is at least a natural mode of procedure.
But other powerful causes operate to increase the hardships which the poor tenants have to endure. In many cases, having purchased a right of possession from the previous occupiers, they consider themselves to have a permanent interest in the farms for which they have paid; accordingly, ejectments are resented by strenuous combinations. Outrages, thus occasioned, are frequently misrepresented, for the very worst of purposes, as arising out of political or religious animosities; and hence it is that in the minds of those unacquainted with the peculiar condition and circumstances
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of the country, prejudices, more easily rooted than removed, are established against both the religion and the politics thus stigmatised and calumniated. One instance of an outrage, which occurred within the present year, and which is totally distinct from either of these causes, but susceptible of being converted by party-spirit into a powerful party engine, I will give in an extract from the letter of a gentleman who has long resided in Ireland, and who has the best opportunities for observation.
"During the week in which I received your first letter, there was a reward of fifty pounds offered by the Irish Government for the apprehension of some persons who dug up a grass field in the county of Limerick. This, to persons not knowing the real state of the country, would appear to be a most wanton and malicious destruction of their neighbour's property; you will be astonished when I tell you that dire necessity, not wantonness, led to the act, and that it is most probable that not the slightest degree of malice was entertained by the perpetrators towards the owner of the field.
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I have known and seen many such outrages committed on property, and will tell you what I found to be invariably the circumstances connected with them. In the southern and midland counties, the lands are let in large farms to persons who rear and feed cattle, and keep extensive dairies for the making of butter, &c.; and the consequence is, that the poor cottier cannot, in hundreds of cases, procure a piece of land to plant potatoes for his miserable family. Though he is willing to pay an enormous rent for the land to grow a crop of potatoes, the farmer generally thinks it unprofitable to let a field for the accommodation of his poor neighbours. They are therefore urged by their necessities to band together, and go at night, and partially or wholly dig up a field, for then the farmer must let it to them (being unfit for grass) at from 8 to 12 guineas per Irish acre. Thus, you see, actual want compels them to force the farmer to sell them the use of his field for that season. You will say that this is a frightful state for a country to be reduced to, when the people are obliged to risk one of the severest penalties of
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the law, that they may get, and for a high price, that which they cannot do without — yet such is the fact. You may think it strange that a farmer should require to be forced to let his land at such a high rate; but when you consider how difficult it is to induce a dairy, or cattle-farmer, to become a tillage-farmer, and when you also take into account that a man having his arrangements for the dairy-farm made (that is, having the quantity of cattle necessary for his farm), if he then gives a ten or twelve-acre field to plant potatoes in, he must sell 10 or 12 cows at a time, when the markets may be depressed, and of course he be a loser — I say that, taking these things into account, you will understand why the farmers are so averse to letting their land in that way."
During the war, when beef and pork sold high, the farmers found it more profitable to feed calves and pigs with their milk and buttermilk, than to sell it to their poor neighbours. The consequence was, that these wretched creatures would band together in a district, go to the farmers at night, and swear them not to rear more than a certain
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number of calves and pigs, and to sell the surplus milk. The farmers frequently violated the engagements thus forced upon them. They were again visited, the calves killed, and themselves carded, and otherwise dreadfully abused. Many wretches have been transported for these offences. It is indeed a frightful consideration, that a people are driven by poverty to the commission of such crimes! If the £50 reward, which procures the punishment of the guilty parties, had been previously spent in finding them employment on a small portion of the numerous wastes, the crimes for which they justly suffered would not have been committed, nor their unoffending families reduced to beggary and ruin. Although these crimes, so much to be deplored, do not, as I have attempted to shew, arise from the naturally vindictive character of the people, it is obvious that they cannot be perpetrated without a danger of establishing, on a formidable scale, ferocious and lawless habits. When, however, the almost incessant cruelties which the Irish have been obliged to endure ever since the invasion of Henry II.
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are considered, the wonder is, not that outrages prevail, but that they are not incomparably more numerous and terrific.
From these topics, painful at the best, let us turn to a consideration of some of the means by whose agency Ireland may be lifted from the degraded condition in which the nations of the earth behold her.
To me it appears that (legislative measures of an exclusively political nature out of the question) Ireland must owe her social regeneration to a successful attention to Agriculture, and that it accordingly behoves all her lovers and well-wishers to bestow upon this great science, with an especial view to her advantage, at least some of the time and some of the interest which have hitherto been engrossed by topics of a more exciting, but not more important character. Whilst, to certain persons, the minute subdivision of land appears pregnant with evils and fraught with danger, by others it is regarded as one of the most feasible projects for the amelioration of the state of the labouring population of Ireland, and consequently
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for the advancement and honour of the whole of that afflicted country. I have no hesitation in declaring my concurrence with the last of these views. There never was, I sincerely believe, a more egregious and mischievous error than to suppose that small farms, in the present state of Ireland, are a source of evil. Like absenteeism, they are the consequence of evil, not the cause. By the discouragements affecting agriculture, and by the decay of trade, the farmers are so impoverished as to be totally without sufficient capital to enable them to occupy large holdings; the result is, large farms do not exist in any considerable number, nor, if they did, would the imperfect skill of the people be adequate, at present, to their management. But to say, that small farms are the cause of distress, is not a whit less illogical than to assert that a spare dinner, or a threadbare coat, is the cause of a man's poverty. If a poor man in Ireland have no land, he must starve. The misery attendant on small farms is not apparent when they are properly conducted. It was the opinion of the most intelligent agriculturists,
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and of all classes best able to judge, in the course of our Examinations (and I would request the reader's particular attention to this fact), that more produce is raised per acre, and more rent paid, on small farms, than on large ones; and that when properly cultivated, four acres enable a man not only to keep his family in comfort, but to save a little money. He pays the rent from butter, and has his milk and potatoes, his pig, and part of his grain, for the consumption of his family, and to meet incidental expenses. The large farmer is, of course, a more scientific and a better educated man, and has a larger capital at command; a poor man's capital is the labour of himself and his family; and although the large farmer has the advantage of the knowledge arising from superior instruction, nothing can be easier than to teach a small farmer, particularly an Irishman, so much, and quickly too, as will qualify him to become an excellent agriculturist. When shown, that by mowing his clover, rape, &c, for his cow, an acre will keep three cows instead of one, and that by keeping them in a yard, where all the
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manure will be preserved, and increased by the addition of various kinds of collected vegetable matter, his crops will be augmented; that, in fact, paradoxical as it may seem, the more cattle he keeps, the more grain his little farm will be susceptible of yielding; his exertions cannot fail to be stimulated by the simplicity and the facility of means which are to produce such incalculably important ends. He attempts the course recommended for his adoption, and finds it answer, even beyond his expectations. This is a beautiful system, and not less practicable than it is beautiful. It is within the scope of the poor man's intellect; it is intelligible to the meanest capacity; and places those who adopt it, on a level, to all practical purposes, with the best-educated farmer. Numerous instances have I witnessed of the admirable tendency of this system.31 No large farm with which I am acquainted
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(and I have inspected many of the best managed estates in the three kingdoms) can surpass many of the small ones under Mr. Blacker's care; nor is this remark limited to a score or two of farms, consisting of one peculiar species of land, but comprehends many thousand acres, and a vast variety of soils. Besides, by first having a small farm, they are enabled to exert the only capital they possess, namely labour; and, after a series of successful endeavours, to increase their holdings. Circumstanced as Ireland is, there must be small farmers, before there are large ones; and the small-farm system, apart from its immediate utility, is productive of very important benefits, in a moral point of view. It is a system of social gradation and progression; the higher and more advantageous positions being open to a judicious exercise of energy and industry. By multiplying the number of those who have an
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interest in the land, as holders, it is the means of diffusing a spirit of independence and self-respect, and has an inevitable tendency to elevate the rank of the agriculturist, in a proportion at least equal to the increase of their physical comforts; for they are lifted above the condition of mere servants, and established in the character of masters.
For the sake of precluding misunderstanding, I would here observe, that I am no advocate for small farms, except when the circumstances of the country require them, which I conceive to be the case in Ireland at present. I would not, for instance, recommend that the 300-acre farms of England and Scotland should be divided, although I am persuaded there would be a very signal advantage in dividing those above that size. It is much more profitable, even for the farmer himself, to produce a good crop on a small quantity of land, than a middling crop on a large extent.
On commencing the above system, some pecuniary assistance, but to no great amount, is requisite. According to Mr. Blacker's plan, a loan of
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lime or clover seed will be sufficient; according to Mr. Rose's, of a cow or a pig. Proofs of complete success, under the judicious management of these gentlemen, may be seen in Armagh, Tyrone, and Monaghan. Not only there, but in other parts of Ireland, I had the pleasure of witnessing a great number of examples of its efficacy; examples of farmers, occupying small holdings of four acres, having been raised from indigence and despair to a condition of positive comfort — in their own words, "to a state of independence." Having had abundant opportunities of personally observing the effects of the small-farm system, I may be permitted to speak confidently respecting it; and my firm persuasion is, that so far from being, what some have too hastily pronounced it, a system of pernicious tendency, it can only be followed by pernicious results, when pursued in a careless, slovenly, and injudicious manner. As with all other projects, success or failure in this system turns upon the proper or improper mode of conducting it. But, however improperly managed, it would be impossible to be productive
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of evils in any degree equal to those which exist under the present course of things. The Irish are at present literally in a state of continual starvation; and it is well known that numbers of them do not obtain four shillings a week; and that if they could get a shilling a day they would be indifferent about land. Farmers of capital are out of the question at present: a systematic improvement in the country must take place before they are brought into existence; for such are the political and religious dissensions, that respectable people are unwilling to sacrifice the greater security and privileges which they enjoy in England, for the uncertainties of a life spent in Ireland. Accordingly, before the capitalists of this country will venture to embark in extensive speculations in that, the legislature must apply remedies for the unhappy differences that distract and disgrace it. The Irish, as I have had repeated occasion to observe in some of the preceding chapters of this work, must be treated as A People — not, as heretofore, as a vast multitude of obnoxious sectarians; and the laws and institutions
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conferred upon them, must be devised without reference to religious distinctions. That such is the desire of the Irish Government we have recently had the eloquent testimony of the Lord Lieutenant; that such is the desire of the great mass of the people of England, has been incontestably proved over and over again. But, powerful as legislative measures must ultimately prove, something more is wanted to effect a speedy adjustment of existing evils; and attention directly turns to the noblemen and wealthy proprietors of Ireland, as the means of accomplishing what parliamentary enactments, if unaccompanied by their co-operation, would be comparatively tardy in achieving. The duty of regarding their poorer fellow-subjects in a spirit of more enlarged and enlightened toleration, imposes a paramount obligation upon these influential individuals; and it is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when the ambition of maintaining or establishing the predominance of a party, will yield to the loftier ambition of promoting the general good. The moist and genial climate, and the mellow and
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fertile soil of Ireland, peculiarly adapt that country to the growth of hemp and flax, and the production of abundance of milk and butter. The latter indeed has always been a staple commodity. Mr. Blacker thinks the duty upon the foreign import of these articles ought to be so much advanced as to make them equal to the present duty on grain.32 This would have an almost immediate tendency to bring more land into cultivation, and ultimately to reduce the price of the articles protected. Mr. Blacker states that the country pays annually for foreign butter, tallow, hemp, and tobacco, in round numbers, £6,000,000: besides many minor articles, all, or most part, of which, might be produced at home. We have seen that the protection of Corn Laws has enabled the British farmer to produce a sufficiency of grain for home consumption; and if the previously mentioned articles were equally protected, we should, I doubt not, have a supply adequate to our necessities: under this plan, not only would more land be
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brought into cultivation (in consequence of which, the prices, as I have before said, would be diminished) but that already cultivated would be improved, by reason, first, of the improved mode of feeding cattle,and secondly, of the necessarily additional number of cows. As agriculture became extended, the labour of the people would be in greater demand; they would accordingly receive better wages, and be enabled to live on better food: and it is a self-evident proposition, that the better the food on which a people live, the more the produce is increased—because the more cattle and sheep that are kept upon the land, the more that land is enriched; provided, of course, the food of the cattle, and the manure, be economically husbanded and judiciously applied. Corn and cattle, like agriculture and manufactures, operate favourably towards each other. The more cattle the more corn; and, on the other hand, the increase of corn augments the means of subsistence, both for cattle and man. The increased and improved cultivation of land in Ireland, must, I am firmly persuaded, form one of the principal remedies for
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the singularly depressed state of that country. Under a proper system of agriculture, more than double the present population might find profitable employment; and when agriculture and manufactures go hand in hand, as they unquestionably will, if not unfairly interfered with, profitable occupation for four or five times the number of hands at present employed, will, I feel well assured, be provided.
In hazarding this assertion, startling as it may appear to some, I am perfectly convinced that I speak within compass: and having bestowed much of my time upon agricultural pursuits, for the last thirty years, I may perhaps, without incurring a charge of undue presumption, be allowed to feel confidence on subjects to which so much of my attention has been necessarily devoted. Let any one who may be inclined to question the accuracy of my suggestion as to the probability of the produce of Ireland being at least quadrupled, look at the miserable state of the land at present under cultivation (if, indeed, it deserve the name of cultivation) —the ground covered with weeds — in
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want of draining — deprived of manure — having, at the best of times, but a scanty allowance of bad seed, and sometimes none — the farmer, with the rudest implements, and ignorant of any proper system of farming — deficient in even a poor description of cattle — possessing very few sheep — the Bailiffs, or "Drivers," regularly pensioned upon him, whether he pays his rent or not — and attending him to market, to prevent him appropriating to his own use the money for his produce! Let him cast his eye, as he travels through the country, over the immense bogs and waste lands, which are everywhere to be seen; and, after observing these things, he cannot fail to be convinced that Ireland might easily be made to yield four or five times as much grain, cattle, butter, hemp, and flax, as she does at present. Nor has the British land-owner, or farmer, any reason to feel alarmed at this prospect. A great part of the additional produce must be consumed by the population of Ireland; this is a certain consequence of the improved cultivation of the country. Where, I would ask, where are now the immense numbers
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of shoemakers, and tailors, blacksmiths, and carpenters, coachmakers, and sadlers, with a great variety of trades and professions which I need not stay to particularize, but which will necessarily be called into existence and operation, as the increase of industry and capital is created?
The remedy above suggested, is something more than a vague and impracticable theory; it has the merit, if I mistake not, of being perfectly feasible. Let landlords do as Lord Gosford has done, and it is accomplished.33 Should Government think it expedient to second the endeavours of individuals, by extending protection to the farmers in respect of the several articles before mentioned, and to promote the diffusion of agricultural knowledge, but particularly of the allotment system, the remedy will be secured, not perhaps more surely, but with greater expedition. If this were once adopted, the workhouse-system
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might be dispensed with — a system, which, while it will require an enormous expenditure of money to carry it into effect, will be attended with considerable risk, and be of doubtful benefit at the best. For it will scarcely be denied, that unless profitable employment be provided for the inmates of those establishments, no benefit will be conferred upon society, at all comparable with the expense of providing and maintaining them: no useful capital or stock is made available, as in the case of money devoted to agricultural improvements, which accumulates as compound interest, and, instead of destroying the energy of the labourer and his family, stimulates them to perpetual exertion, under the expectation of receiving the reward of their labour, in proportion to the degree in which they employ it. If a man once enter a workhouse, and be reduced to the necessity of being fed as a pauper, his moral energies, I contend, and his sense of shame and independence, are dissipated and broken. Besides this, no comparison can be instituted between the system in England, and that contemplated to be established in Ireland.
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In England, a workhouse may easily be made less agreeable (independently of the loss of liberty) than a labourer's home; in Ireland, on the contrary, what sort of habitation can you put him in, that will not be infinitely superior to his damp, dark cabin, which admits the rain and wind through various parts of the roof? and how is he to be fed in a workhouse, in a manner inferior to his ordinary mode of subsistence? You can hardly deny him a sufficiency of potatoes and salt!
I am confident, as I have said before, that the land now in cultivation, would, if properly occupied and conducted, supply plenty of work, not only for all the present population of Ireland, but for a very considerable increase.34 The cultivated lands alone allow ten and a half acres for each
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family of the whole population, whereas, in Great Britain, the proportion is but ten acres. As these lands, however, may not be immediately available, it becomes necessary to direct attention to the unreclaimed and useless wastes. The quantity of such wastes is almost incredible. In the county of Cork alone, according to the testimony of the gentleman just mentioned, there are upwards of 700,000 acres; in Donegal, 644,000; and in Ireland, altogether, between five and six millions; a great part of which is suitable for cultivation. This being the case, and seeing that the labouring population is principally agricultural, how much more desirable it is, for labourers to migrate to those parts of the country where the land holds out inducements for profitable labour, than for them to be transported to Canada; and how vastly injurious to their industry and enterprise would be the introduction into the poor-law bill of any settlement clause!35
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I am far from being prepared to recommend the expenditure of much capital in extensive drainages in the cultivation of the bogs, until all the other land which can be brought into cultivation without extraordinary outlay, should be improved; because the returns would be quicker and more certain from the land at present under cultivation, and from the wastes which are not bog. The deep and wet bogs may be reserved to the last; although I know perfectly well that bog-land, when drained, is admirably adapted for growing luxuriant crops, with less labour and manure than almost any other description of land. Besides (and this is an important consideration), the wear and tear of the necessary implements of agriculture, is very light upon a bog-farm. In Lancashire, where some extensive mosses (in Irish phraseology, bogs) are
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cultivated, the produce, on an average, is from 5 to 7 quarters of oats per acre; and if the system of burning the moss were abandoned, and a quantity of good manure applied, the average would be considerably larger. The bottom moss (after the turf has been dug off, and sold for a handsome sum), where there is a subsoil of marl, gravel, or clay, is most valuable land, and produces excellent wheat and other grain, the finest grasses, and turnips, mangel wurzel, and other green crops, in perfection. These are precisely of the same nature as the Irish bogs.
The cultivation of bogs has been injudiciously decried, and unfairly represented. We perpetually hear of the expenses of cultivation, and the losses that attend it; but these, it is important to remember, are the cases of Gentlemen Agriculturists; and when or where did gentlemen not lose by cultivating and occupying land, whether good or bad? Nothing, or but little, is said of the many small patches of verdant bog, won by the quiet industry and perseverance of the poor labourer, and rendered fertile by his labour alone. The
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summer stall-feeding being adopted, such an accumulation of manure would be provided, as at once to dispose of all the difficulties attending the cultivation of the most barren lands. The economical use of food, enables the farmer to maintain treble the number of cattle upon the same quantity of land; and, what may seem extraordinary to those unacquainted with the subject, the plants of clover, tares, and grasses, produce, when mown, much more than when pastured. The crops of grain, moreover, which succeed the mown clover (though two, or even three, crops of the clover have been taken from the land in one season) are superior to what they would have been, had the clover been pastured.
The only rational objection that has been, or, in my opinion, can be urged against this system, refers to the increased labour which it obliges: but, where labour is even of the highest value, the disadvantages bear no comparison to the positive benefits that accrue. One of these benefits, and not perhaps the least of them, is, that under the system I have been recommending, there would
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be no danger of the famine and destitution which have so frequently occurred. Such a variety of produce being raised, some of it, whatever the season may be, is certain to suit; besides, there would be in store the cattle, and their food.36
My opinion, it has been seen, is in favour, strongly in favour, of the possibility of Government and Companies (without the loss of a farthing) profitably employing all the unemployed labourers upon small farms or the waste lands, at piece-work, in draining, gravelling, claying, and bringing them into a state of cultivation sufficiently excellent to attract the attention of purchasers or takers. To provide the people with work by the piece, and to let every man receive a reward proportioned to his industry, is, I am convinced, the only way of creating a proper energy and independence among the people.37 Every other plan with which I am
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acquainted, seems likely to be attended with difficulties and expenses of a fearfully formidable extent. When men know that they are working merely for the sake of work, they never work with the same spirit as when employed for some real and beneficial purpose. This feeling (which constitutes one of the distinguishing differences between man and the brute creation) ought, instead of being rudely and cruelly suppressed, to be religiously fostered and preserved; — but within the degrading atmosphere of a workhouse, it will pine, and decay, and become extinct. It is incompatible with the very nature of such an institution, so conducted; an institution of which the bare idea is humiliating and odious.
On the subject of Poor-Laws, at the present moment so peculiarly important and interesting, it may be expected that I should speak in decided terms; and having expressed myself somewhat strongly against the contemplated workhousesystem, I may be understood to be equally opposed
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to the principle of the great question with which that system has been latterly connected. Such a supposition would be erroneous. Unless Poor-Laws were constructed upon a wretched plan, it is manifest that vast good cannot fail to accrue from them. They will impose, for instance, the burden upon the landowners, who will accordingly feel bound, by considerations of self-interest, to improve the condition of the surrounding population. Productive, however, as they may be of benefit, they are at the best but a roundabout way of accomplishing the desired end — namely, of creating labour. What I should desire would be — when an able-bodied labourer complained of the absence of work, to answer his application in these words; "Here are four acres of waste land, of which you may have a lease for 21 years; you may go there; and, with such assistance as will be provided, you and your family may find abundant employment, and live in comfort." Let this plan be tried first; let the labourer go to his new location; let him be supplied with a few poles, worth as many shillings, to build his cabin with; and some lime or
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manure, and a few potatoes; and, thus provided, let him work or starve. A system based on these principles, might be easily managed by a Board, similar to that constituted for the superintendence of the Poor-Laws; and the people might be rated for it with as little difficulty as for the maintenance of those laws. The workhouse, pregnant with numerous and mighty evils, should be the last resource. Houses of Refuge for the aged and helpless, would be highly desirable and most admirable institutions; but to send a hale, strong man, anxious to employ himself in profitable and useful labour, to waste the best part of his life in degrading idleness and confinement, is, I feel strongly persuaded, in every respect an act of indefensible policy.
In reference to a subject treated of in a previous page, respecting the employment of professed agriculturists to superintend the early management of small farms, and to impart instruction to the ignorant farmers on the principles of agriculture (which might be done at a trifling cost, the salaries of many of such agriculturists being under
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£40 a year), I am aware that it may be urged in opposition to it, that some landlords do not feel disposed, and that many are not able, to embrace the measures proposed for their adoption. I am aware, too, that it is far from being desirable that Government should advance money, or hold mortgages of estates; but Ireland is an important exception to a general rule, and, by one means or another, must be rescued from her present deplorable condition — a condition sufficiently wretched to reflect disgrace upon any state that should pretend to even the slightest degree of civilization. I would accordingly presume to recommend that Government should advance money to such of the proprietors as were disposed to accept of it, on security of their estates, at 3 1/2 or four per cent — (the rate of interest in Ireland being six) for the purpose, under certain regulations, of improving the respective properties. Nor need the fact of the estates being mortgaged to their present worth, operate as a bar to the further advance of pecuniary assistance; because, provided the money be laid out judiciously in permanent improvements,
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the estates would be increased in value, in proportion to the sum so expended upon them.
To the above, another project may be added. Government might take lands on long leases, and let them to occupiers in small portions for shorter terms; or might at once purchase, in large portions, the waste lands or estates of such as do not feel disposed, or are not able to reclaim or improve them, and sell them out, in smaller allotments, or let them on 21 years' leases, to those who might be disposed to cultivate them. These measures, although I am convinced that they would be important and beneficial in their results, do not perhaps properly fall among the direct duties of Government, whose legitimate and most effectual method of ultimately securing the desired advantages of national comfort and prosperity, is to establish, without reference to sect or party, equal laws to all classes of the community.
One of the most inane of fallacies is that of asserting that Ireland contains a redundant population; and one of the most inane of remedies is that of emigration. If what a distinguished
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writer has observed be true, that in every country where the inhabitants have unhappily diminished, there, instead of the means of subsistence having been more liberally dispensed, the population has been invariably still more degraded and reduced in condition than in numbers; it follows, as a matter of course, that emigration would have the effect of augmenting the calamity instead of diminishing it: Emigration, in fact, is the remedy proposed by a narrow and short-sighted policy — a policy that would postpone the consideration of the great evil, by appearing to do away with a portion of it. But, admitting emigration to be the only effectual cure for a redundant population — it may be suggested to those who advocate the trial of it, that no population can properly be said to be redundant, until all the resources of which a country is possessed, have been fairly, and fully, and finally applied. Then, and not till then, can a population be pronounced redundant; then, and not till then, should emigration, in a national point of view, and on a national scale, be adopted. Supposing the present condition of
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Ireland to exhibit the maximum of advantage obtainable from that country, a fair case is doubtless made out in favour of a transference of large numbers of its people to distant climes; but Ireland does not exhibit this maximum. Ireland, it is notorious to those who know anything of its internal history, yields little compared with what it might be made to yield. I have shewn, in the course of these volumes, that double, or even treble the number of labourers might be profitably employed; that the produce of the earth might without difficulty be at least quadrupled; and that a variety of almost unbounded resources of employment and wealth, are unexplored and unproductive. Away, then, with the absurd cry of a surplus population; and away, too, with the equally absurd cry of emigration. The money requisite to carry into operation a comprehensive plan of emigration, would more than provide means for supplying the whole of the unemployed population with work, and accordingly, for augmenting the opulence of Ireland, and for elevating the moral and physical condition of her people. Upon this
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subject, I shall indulge in only one additional remark; — that the people who leave, are usually the energetic, the industrious, and the monied; those who stay, the idle, the dissolute, the spiritless, and the poor.
In conclusion, I would briefly remind the reader of this very important particular: — that so far from the supposition that Ireland contains a surplus population being correct, the truth is, that her labour is perfectly inadequate to the development of her various and almost unbounded resources. No course of policy, founded upon so grand a mistake as is implied in the conclusion that extreme poverty is a necessary sign of a superabundance of labour, can ever lead to permanently judicious and salutary results.