many are now (April 1848) dragging out a miserable and useless existence. Mr Coulthurst, in county Cork, reclaimed a bog farm for which the tenants could not pay four shillings per acre. The drainage and reclamation cost £16 per acre, which was repaid before the fifth year, and the land is now rated at the poor-law valuation at £4 per acre. Sir Charles Sligh, Bart., and his amiable lady, have effected great good on their estate in Donegal, by locating the surplus population on the waste lands, and assisting the poor farmers to cultivate them. This English family gave up their rents for two years, and permanent employment has been found for six times as many persons as the land could formerly support; and its produce has been multiplied tenfold."4
It may be asked, why are these examples not followed? and doubts have been thrown out as to the accuracy of the statements of the able inquirers who have reported on the Irish waste lands, because they are not actually reclaimed. One simple reason has been stated by Lord Cloncurry, viz., that "arterial drainage on a large scale is indispensable as a commencement, cutting through many properties, deepening river-beds, perhaps to a considerable distance. Hence government alone can set on foot such undertakings on that comprehensive scale, and with that engineering skill, which is necessary."5 But a more general answer will suggest itself to any one who knows the general habits and circumstances of the great Irish proprietors. Many of them have not the habits of life or the knowledge which would enable them to superintend or judge of such improvements; and many more have not the means of encountering even the small expense which will be requisite in their commencement. Further, it is always to be observed, that, in the present state of the country, another mode of greatly and rapidly improving the value of their estates, without any such outlay either of skill or capital, always presents itself to the Irish proprietors – viz., that of clearing their estates of the cottar population, and throwing them into large farms, to be cultivated in the improved English or Scotch style of agriculture – or even into pasture; the objection to which is simply that, in that case, they would not require for their cultivation more than a third part of the population now located on them, and, therefore, that this is a system relieving the landlords only, and greatly aggravating all the evils which make the management of Ireland an object of concern to the nation at large.
This leads us to consider the question, which is the most momentous of any that can be proposed on this topic – If the plan of locating the idle hands of Ireland on her waste lands is not adopted, what other resource exists for the relief of the redundant population, which is, as we have stated, so enormous and unquestionable a burden on England and Scotland? It is clear that, in Ireland itself, as the law now stands, two plans only are thought of, and if government does not bring forward a third plan, one or other of these must quickly predominate. Either the main body of the landlords, who are known to be quite incredulous as to any improvements being effected by their cottar tenants, must be allowed to pursue their own system of keeping them on hand —i. e., only as tenants-at-will – and clearing their lands of them as rapidly as possible, with a view to large farms or sheep-pastures; or else that system must be adopted, which is demanded generally by the tenantry and by the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, of giving to the tenants one form or other of what has been called "fixity of tenure" —i. e., such security against a ruinous rise of rent, or dispossession, as may induce them to exert all their energies, and sometimes to bring forth concealed capital, for the improvement of the soil, and, in many instances, for the reclamation of wastes; – this party maintaining that the main cause of the generally wretched condition of the cottars, and imperfect cultivation of the soil, is not the indolence of the people, but their knowledge that they are constantly liable to a rise of rent, or expulsion from their farms, immediately on its being perceived that they are effecting any improvement.
These are the two remedies for the existing state of matters in Ireland, which these two parties wish to apply, and unless a third plan be adopted by government, one or other of these must quickly predominate. Now, let us consider the results to be expected in either case.
If government does nothing, but merely protects, by an armed force, the proprietors and their agents from the fury of the people, the system of clearance of the estates will be more and more acted on; and we must reckon on one-half or even two-thirds of the still existing population on most of the estates being turned adrift. No doubt the poor-law will make these outcasts a heavy burden on the proprietors; and it is held by many, and very probably with justice, that, instead of turning their cottar tenants adrift, and then having to deal with them as unemployed poor, if they were to accord to them such a tenant-right as exists generally, as a voluntary compact, in Ulster, they might expect the poor-rate to be so much less, the cultivation so to improve and extend, and the payment of rents to become gradually so much more punctual, that their own condition would be gradually amended. But it is certain that this is not the view that they take of their own position at this moment, nor that on which they will voluntarily act; for if it were, the tenant-right, or at least the practice of granting long leases, would be as general in other parts of Ireland as it now is in Ulster, or in Scotland.
This being so, the poor-law, giving the right to relief to the ejected poor, must either be enforced or not enforced. If it is enforced, and no other resource for the relief of those people is presented, there is every prospect of many of the unions becoming bankrupt, and the proprietors being involved in the ruin. We know that this consummation is already proclaimed by many of the proprietors in Ireland and their friends as nigh at hand; and the only advantage which in that case can be said to be derived from the poor-rate is, that the ruin and degradation, otherwise confined to the lower ranks, will have extended, as in justice they should, to every class of society. Again, if the poor-law is not enforced, and the redundant population is thrown, as heretofore, on its own resources, we have first, that res pessimi exempli– a law openly violated – that the rich may escape its inflictions, and the poor be deprived of its protection; and secondly, we have no other prospect before us but a continuance and increase of all that misery, vagrancy, famine, and pestilence in Ireland, and all that extension of these evils to the great towns of England and Scotland, which have made our connexion with Ireland the bane of this country.
On the other hand, if the legislature were to adopt the only effectual means of restraining the clearances by the landlords —i. e., to grant the desired boon of fixity of tenure, at the existing rent, to all the tenants – or even absolutely require leases of a certain duration to be given to them all – it cannot be denied that they would commit the grave political offence of extensive interference not only with portions of private property, (which, all admit, may be justly taken, on reasonable compensation, for public objects,) but with the whole income of many individuals. This offence is of such a character, that we can hardly expect to see a measure involving it ever adopted by any legislature in this country; and it must be confessed that, however well adapted such a measure may be to the exigency of the present time in Ireland, the precedent thereby established would go far to justify many acts, as regards other possessions of property, which can hardly be called by any other name than spoliation.
These are the considerations which lead us to believe that, in the present circumstances of Ireland – a population having grown up in the absence of any poor-law – with which a law, enacted tardily, and at a most disastrous period, cannot be expected to cope – the newly-acquired right to existence of the Irish poor must be aided and supported – as was always desired by Mr P. Scrope, and all the more enlightened advocates of that measure, and at one time proposed by the present Premier – by another measure, on the part of government, whereby employment may be procured for them, the resources of the country improved, and the proprietors taught, by example much more effectually than they can ever be by precept, how these duties, now legally imposed on them for the benefit of the poor, may be made to consist with improvement of their own position.
What is often said of the impolicy of government coming into the market for the purchase and improvement of lands in Ireland, as deterring private speculators from coming forward, and checking the influx of really productive capital, would be a very fair allegation, if the object in view were merely the economical one of raising the value of the land and the income of the landed proprietors. But this is not adverting to the real difficulty of the case, the existence of a redundant population– the result of the