Unfortunately for the cause of truth, and the welfare of that country, Ireland has lately become the stock in trade of every political writer: "monster pamphlets" and "monster paragraphs" succeed each other with astonishing rapidity—all alike remarkable for the "monstrous" assertions they contain, and for the "monstrous" ignorance they display of the subject on which they profess to enlighten us.

English tourists, Scotch agents, and German adventurers, flock like birds of prey, and swarm over the devoted country. They go there, not for the purpose of enquiring into the real state of things, or the real causes of the admitted misery of the people; but in order to write what will be most productive to themselves—not with the philanthropic or patriotic motive of endeavouring to elucidate a subject of so much importance; but with the determination to compile as many pages as they can, in as short a given period as possible. They draw the most absurd caricatures; and, pandering to the prevailing public opinion, they relate only what tends to strengthen it in its errors, and to misdirect and mislead those who consult them for information, or rely on them as authorities. Their numerous errors are detected and pointed out by the newspapers, according as they tell against the political interests of their respective parties. There is but one topic on which they are all agreed—that is, in their unanimous and unsparing abuse of the Irish landlords; and, however much they may be condemned as disentitled to belief on other subjects, on this their assertions are taken, by all parties, as authorities "true as holy writ."

It requires no witch to tell us that Ireland is in a condition in which she ought not to be; but it does require some industry, and an intimate knowledge of the habits and character of the people, to assign this state of things to the proper causes. In their love for the marvellous, most writers on Ireland have overlooked facts; they have not condescended to enquire into particulars, or to use that unquestionable information which is actually in existence. We therefore propose to supply this omission, and to state the case of the landlord and tenant question as it really is; and, although many acts of oppression and harshness may have been perpetrated by individuals, we trust we shall be able to show, from authentic documents, that nothing can be more unjust than the exaggerated charges brought against the present Irish landlords as regards the exorbitance of their rents, and nothing more fallacious than to attribute the misery of the people to the want of tenure, or due security in the occupation of their lands. The last census, taken by the police under the direction of government, gives us the actual rental of Ireland as returned by the occupiers themselves. This information is therefore derived from a source on which little doubt can be thrown; and although we may justly suspect (from the desire of the Irish peasant to make the most of his miseries) that the rent may have been in many instances exaggerated, we may rest perfectly assured that in no instance was it underrated. Founded on the results of this enquiry, a very useful and instructive sheet (entitled Ireland at a Glance) has been compiled and published, in which, amongst other statistical information, the average rent of land in each county is given, and on the correctness of which we may safely rely. Had the conduct of the Irish aristocracy, some forty or fifty years ago, attracted but a small portion of the public attention that has latterly been bestowed upon it, no doubt great good would have been effected. Then, unquestionably, the landlord could do almost any thing; then, no doubt, he could with impunity set the law at defiance. The Catholic, degraded as he was, durst not complain; but the establishment of the petty sessions courts, and the agitation which preceded emancipation, altered the matter altogether. The Catholic Association employed active and intelligent attorneys. Those men were everywhere: the petty sessions courts were regularly attended by them; for the slightest transgression of the law the magistrate was hauled up; and the poor man was shown that he had only to bring his case fairly before the tribunals to obtain justice. While the Association existed, he was fully protected at its expense: by the time it was dissolved, he had acquired a thorough knowledge of his own rights; and he had ready agents in the country attorneys, who were always at hand, and always but too happy, for their own interest, to undertake any cause in which they anticipated success. This, so far as the administration of justice was concerned, the publicity of their proceedings, and the unwillingness of men to expose themselves to actions for the misconduct of some members of their body, effectually checked magisterial delinquency: where any violation of the law did occur, there could be no doubt as to the punishment.

Had the conduct of the Irish proprietors (in their character of landlords) been taken to task at the same period, no question they were deeply to be condemned. Then, and always before, the practice of the landlord was—to lease large tracts at an easy rent to the most solvent person he could find, or to set in copartnership, (that is, by creating a joint tenancy in all the inhabitants of any particular town-land, making the rich accountable for the debt of the poor.) His only object was to secure his income; so that was accomplished, he cared little for the welfare of the inhabitants, or the cultivation of the estate. The peace came—prices fell,—the middlemen not occupying, were in most cases unable to pay their rents when they could not enforce them from those in possession, whom they had ruined by their extortion; the consequence was, they were too happy to abandon their interests, and leave the landlord to deal with the paupers they had created. In a few years after the peace, the middleman system had ceased to exist; the owner of the soil, coming into immediate contact with the tenantry, saw the monstrous injustice and the destructive tendencies of the copartnership plan—and it was discontinued. Yet such is the passion for legislation, that both systems are now about to be disinterred, to be taken from the oblivion to which their own iniquities long since consigned them, and to be set up in the preamble of an act of Parliament, in order that Mr Sharman Crawfurd may have the opportunity of again prostrating them by legislative enactments. We are certain that, for the last ten years, no instance can be shown in which any landlord set, or any tenant took, land on determinable leases, for the purpose of subletting; or any single instance in which the landlords practised, or permitted, the copartnership system on their estates; and yet the public time is to be wasted, and the public attention to be occupied, by the introduction of laws to restrain practices which are no longer in operation. It is true, some of those leases where the middleman held on very easy terms, and was able to pay the rent himself during the great depression, are still in existence; but they are daily dropping out: and it is the treatment of those properties, when they come upon the owners' hands, that has latterly attracted so much attention. From 1818, a total revolution in the management of land took place in Ireland: the proprietors became in most instances the managers of their own estates; and, as each year advanced, the necessity of attending strictly to their duties became more manifest to them. From 1830 to 1843, more was done, and is still continuing to be done, in improving or in endeavouring to improve, the condition of the people, than was ever done before. The large owners of land employed Scotch stewards to instruct their tenantry in the most improved system of husbandry; and their neighbours profited by the example. Green-cropping increased in a most astonishing degree; agricultural societies were formed in almost every county; and the country was advancing steadily and rapidly in the march of prosperity, when the baneful agitation again started into existence. To disconnect the peasantry from the landlords, who could not be induced to join in the senseless and mischievous cry for Repeal, now became the object of the agitators: the most unjust charges were made against the gentry; and even their exertions to promote the growth of turnips, or to teach the people the proper mode of cultivation, were turned into ridicule and treated with contempt, in the public speeches of some of the Roman Catholic bishops. The floodgates of abuse were thrown open; the most incredible acts of violence and atrocity were imputed to them; generalities were dealt in—except in a few instances, in which it was fondly believed the facts would have borne out the assertions. But when investigation fully exonerated the accused from the charges brought against them, still the agitators persevered: the accusations being general, it was not the duty of any individual to contradict them. From their frequent reassertion, the English press accorded them credit; the English newspapers became the advocates of those they believed to be oppressed; no story was too ridiculous to obtain insertion; anonymous correspondents heaped obloquy on the best and most pains-taking landlords; while any attempt at their vindication was sure to be discountenanced—a tyrannical act of one man was seized on, and blazoned forth as proof positive of the guilt of all.

The conduct of the Irish landlords was assailed just at the time when it was commencing to become meritorious; and they were almost literally deprived (by public opinion) of all control, just at the period when (for the first time) they were exercising the influence which their position ought to give them, for the benefit and the advantage of the people.

From the manner in which the laws regulating the connexion between landlord and tenant in Ireland are spoken of, and from the frequent demands made for their alteration and improvement, one would naturally suppose that they differed essentially from those which regulate the connexion between the same parties in this country. Yet such is not the fact: so far as the law goes, it is the same on both sides the Channel. By law, the Irish landlord can only eject a tenant holding by lease after he owes a year's rent; and then the tenant has six months for redemption. He can only put out a tenant-at-will by giving him six months' notice, (the six months to expire on or before the day on which the tenancy commenced;) and afterwards by ejecting him, if he refuse to give up possession. He can only distrain after the rent becomes due. Those powers the law also gives to the English landlord: so far as legislative enactments go, the landlords of both countries stand precisely in the same position. But the English proprietor can do much which the Irish one durst not attempt: he may prevent the fences on his estate from being torn down, or the trees and hedge-rows he has planted from being cut: he may prevent his land from being damaged by bad husbandry, or a succession of the same crops being taken from it until it is rendered useless;—all this he may do by enforcing his covenants, and no one blames him. An Irish landlord may put the most stringent clauses in his leases; but he cannot use the power which their enforcement would give him: public opinion, (always in favour of the delinquent,) and the dread of the assassin, restrain him. The late Mr Hall let a farm in fine condition: the tenant, contrary to his engagements, tore up the land, burned it, and set it in con-acre. The unfortunate gentleman endeavoured to prevent this violation of an agreement. He went to the ground and threatened to put his covenant in force; and, for doing so, he was murdered in the open day in the presence of numbers of people: the assassins were allowed quietly to walk off; and it was only when one of the hired murderers, tempted by a large reward, peached on his accomplices in crime, that any of them were brought to justice.

There is an act of Parliament in force in Ireland for the prevention of burning land, which imposes heavy penalties; yet it cannot stop this mischievous practice—and why? Because, by having recourse to it, the tenant (until he quite exhausts the soil) can raise better crops with more ease to himself; it is a much less troublesome process than that of collecting manure from the scourings of his ditches or his moor land, or burning lime; and it enables him to spend the winter months in idleness and amusement, when he ought to be providing for his next year's crops. If an English tenant cannot meet his engagements, he surrenders his land as a matter of course: if an Irish tenant be turned out, even after owing many years' rent, he considers himself an ill-used man, (and so do his neighbours too;) and no man complains so loudly of the extortion of his landlord as he who pays no rent at all. The Irish landlord has the advantage of being able to bring his ejectment at the courts of quarter-sessions, and at less expense than it can be done in this country, provided the rent be under £50 a-year. But this may be considered, and with justice, of equal benefit to the tenant: if he redeem within the six months allowed by law, the costs the landlord can put upon him will only amount to £2, 10s; whereas, with the superior courts, it would be at least £14. Yet some of the patriotic Irish journals have required, as an improvement in the law, that ejectment at quarter-sessions should be abolished, and that the landlord should, in every case, be sent to the superior courts for redress. To make such an alteration in the law would be unjust towards the landlord—as it would compel him to expend a large sum in regaining possession of his land, in addition to the loss of his rent, (if he had a pauper to deal with;) and it would be injurious to the interests of the tenant, as t would give a tyrannical and oppressive landlord the power of overwhelming the poor but honest man, who only wanted time to redeem, by the load of law-costs he would be enabled to put upon him.

Having shown that the law gives the Irish landlord no power incompatible with justice, or unnecessary for the due maintenance of his rights—in fact that, in respect of it, he is much more restricted than the mercantile man—we are at a loss to see how the law can be altered, and at the same time the rights of property be preserved. It may be said, the Irish tenant has no claim at the termination of his lease for any improvements he may have effected; neither has the English tenant, if he possess a lease. Although, in point of fact, so far as the small Irish farmer is concerned, this is quite an ideal grievance; for he never makes any improvement, or if he does, and pays his rent, he is never disturbed—still an amendment in the law in this respect, may stimulate to industry, and may be effected with advantage to all parties. Against the gentlemen farmers, injustice of this kind may sometimes be perpetrated, and therefore legislation on the subject would be of use; but the poor man who meets his engagements, is never, unless under extraordinary circumstances, removed; and where such is the case, he is almost invariably amply remunerated. Solitary instances of contrary conduct pursued towards him, may no doubt be adduced; but they are too few in any way to account for the present state of dissatisfaction so universally prevalent.

The Irish landlord, then, has no power which he can legally employ for the oppression of his tenant, which is not possessed by all other British landlords. If he violate the law, of course the legal tribunals will afford redress. And are we to be told that that redress would not be sought for; that the wardens and priests, the leading agitators, or the people themselves, would not report their sufferings; and that the power, and influence, and money of the Association, would not be used in their defence?

The outcry raised by Mr O'Connell and his supporters against the landlords, on account of the number of persons "turned out, and left to die by the road-side,"[30] will, we have no doubt, turn out (if possible) to be more unfounded than even his other assertions. The present Commission has ample powers to ascertain this fact at least: and we will venture to assert, that not one instance of starvation will have been proven before it; and that out of the hundreds of thousands who were reported to have been mercilessly turned adrift to perish at the backs of ditches, forty-nine fiftieths will be found well and hearty, and in the occupation of those lands from which they were said to have been expelled. That ejectment-processes were served, and decrees obtained, which, if followed up and enforced, would have put many persons out of possession, we do not deny; but nine-tenths of those are compromised by the payment of part of the rent before the day of trial comes on, and of the decrees obtained, the great majority are never put in execution. Accurate information on this point can easily be obtained from the sheriffs and clerks of the peace for the different counties; those officers have been amongst the first witnesses examined before Lord Devon. We would only ask the public to suspend its judgment, and those well-meaning but mistaken individuals, who, though they reject Mr O'Connell and the priests as authorities on most other subjects, take their assertions on this as proven facts, to reserve their indignation and wrath until the result of this testimony can be known. Ejectment-processes are the most effective and the cheapest means by which the landlord can enforce the payment of the rent due, and as such they are generally had recourse to: before they can be acted on, at least three months must have elapsed after the year's rent (which is the least sum they can be issued for) has become due.

Perhaps nothing has contributed more to foment, certainly nothing has assisted more to continue, the agrarian disturbances in Ireland, than the statements, made so flippantly by journalists and pamphleteers, of the great excess of rent exacted in Ireland over that paid by the English tenantry. Those writers have invariably assumed the truth of the assertions made in this particular; yet nothing can be further from the fact.

There is no statistical account of England recently published, that we can discover, which would give us any correct idea of the present average rent of land in this country;[31] but we think, from all the information we have been able to acquire, by enquiries directed to competent and well-informed persons, that it cannot be set down at less than 25s. an acre. From the last Irish census we learn, that Ireland contains 20,399,608 statute acres, and that the estimated rental is L12,715,478—yielding a trifle over 12s. as the average rent.[32] When it is taken into consideration that the English tenant pays tithes—which, in many localities, amount to more than the entire average rent produced by Irish ground; that he pays the poor-rates, and that he is heavily taxed with turnpikes and other local assessments: and that the Irish tenant pays no tithe, and only half the poor-rates; that no turnpikes exist, except solitary ones in the neighbourhood of cities or very large towns; that, in fact, the only tax he pays is the county cess, varying in different counties from tenpence to one and sixpence the acre half-yearly; and that this assessment is being considerably reduced by the new grand-jury enactments, under which the towns and gentlemen's houses are valued and taxed;—when, we say, all those things are taken into consideration, and besides, that the land in Ireland is naturally better and more productive than the English soil, we think we have satisfactorily disposed of one grave charge against the Irish landlords; and that we have shown that it cannot be the exorbitance of the pecuniary burdens under which he groans, that causes the vast difference between the social condition of the Irish and the English occupier.

It will no doubt be said—"Ah, but the English tenant is housed, and his farm kept in repair, by the landlord, while the Irishman is obliged to do all this himself!" This is true; but certainly the outlay of the Irish tenant on his farm, makes but a small addition to his other engagements. Gates and fences he has, comparatively speaking, none; and, if they be erected for him, they are soon suffered to go to ruin. He requires few outhouses; for in the poor and disturbed districts (and it is those which we are now attending to) he uses his domicile as a receptacle for his pig and his cow, as a matter of choice; we say as a matter of choice—for, if he had the inclination, all writers admit he has abundance of unoccupied time to construct habitations for them. Now, though it is a just cause of regret that we do not see better homesteads and better fences in Ireland, still we cannot admit that the tenant's being obliged to keep such as exist in repair, can be any great hardship in a pecuniary point of view, as he lays out scarcely any thing on them: he does not even expend his own labour on their improvement; and his time, which might be profitably occupied in this way, is wasted in useless idleness, in swelling the train, or cheering the ferocious sentiments, of some mercenary agitator.

Having shown, as correctly as it is possible to do, the relative amount of rents paid in England and in Ireland, let us compare the amount of rents paid in each of the Irish provinces. For this purpose we shall take a maritime and an inland county from each.

It is well known that the quality of the land in the north of Ireland is far inferior to that in either of the other provinces: yet we see, in the maritime counties, that the rich and fertile lands of Clare and Wexford are let much cheaper than the northern counties; and that Mayo, inhabited by unquestionably the poorest and most miserable population in Ireland, is rented at nearly half the amount paid by the independent yeomanry of Down; while, amongst the inland counties, the splendid plains of Roscommon, and the productive lands of Longford, yield less income than the cold and, comparatively speaking, sterile soil of Tyrone. Now, it is not too much (indeed it is under the mark) to say, that two acres in any of those counties we have quoted, in Leinster, Munster, or Connaught, will feed more cattle, and grow more corn, than three acres in either of the northern ones; and yet the tenantry in the north, who pay those comparatively high rents, are contented, and the landlords are considered good.[34] Those statements are founded not on our own opinions, but on incontrovertible facts; and, after having read them, we would ask any dispassionate man if the disturbed condition of the west and south of Ireland can be, with any justice, attributed to the rents imposed by the landlords. In the north, where the highest rents are charged, the people are well housed and well clothed, the ground well tilled, and the rents as well paid as in any part of England. Here, if a tenant wishes to dispose of his right in even a tenancy-at-will, he gets some ten or twelve years' purchase for it; and the answers to Lord Devon's enquiries were, in many instances, that the interference of the commission was not required. While in the south and west, from whence the loudest complaints against the landowners proceed; where the peasant exists in rags, and the gentlemen in a state of semi-starvation; where the people are idle, and their ground untilled; where squalid misery offends the eye and merciless murders shock the feelings; where the terror of the assassin supersedes the power of the landlord, and protects the tenant against all law; there, in the counties so overwhelmed with poverty and debased by crime, the lands are held on terms (the relative value being taken into consideration) by the half easier than in the prosperous and peaceable province of Ulster.

Dublin, Limerick, Meath, and Tipperary, do average a trifle more than the northern counties; but the one is the metropolitan county, and the quality of the land in the others is so superior to any in England or Ireland, that even at the small advance of two shillings an acre, they may justly be considered as more cheaply rented than any other counties.

To understand a people properly, their national character must be attentively studied; and this can only be done by a long residence and a close connexion with them. We cannot therefore be much surprised, that those who undertake to write on a country which they have never seen, or to prescribe remedies for the defects in the social condition of a people amongst whom they have never resided, should be led into grievous mistakes, and that they should be unsafe guides to direct the enquiries of others. Employment, hard work, large wages, and good living, form the objects of the Englishman and the Scotchman's ardent desire; while coarse food, bad lodging, and half clothing, are quite agreeable to the Irishman, if they be combined with independence—in other words, if by using them he may avoid labour, and enjoy those amusements to which he is passionately addicted, and in which he indulges unrestrainedly. We firmly believe, that if a choice of roast beef and loaf bread, accompanied by the labour necessary to earn them, were offered to "Pat" at home, or potatoes and milk, with liberty to frequent the horse-races, cock-fights, and dances, in his neighbourhood, he would unhesitatingly accept the latter. This may seem strange to an Englishman; but there is no accounting for taste. That the potato is coarse food, cannot be doubted; that it is wholesome, is abundantly proved by the stalwart men who subsist on it, and by the ruddy health of the chubby, merry urchins who have, perhaps, never tasted any thing else. Pity it is that the former should be so negligent of, or so indifferent to, their own advantage; or that the latter should have been (until lately) suffered to grow up in that ignorance which almost secures a continuance in the same courses which proved the bane and misfortune of their fathers. No peasant in Europe devotes so much of his time to amusement as does the Irishman. Go to the places of public amusement, or to the fairs and markets, in the busiest and most hurried seasons, and how many thousands will you see, who have no earthly business there but to meet their friends, to laugh and to chat, and (before Father Mathew reformed them) to drink and to fight!

To suppose, as some influential writers here do, that there is no alternative between the possession of land and absolute starvation, is one of those imaginary fictions often conjured up by those who wish to indulge in what they believe to be powerful, and wish to be pathetic, appeals to the feelings; but it betrays great ignorance of the subject on which they propound their opinions. The condition of the rural labourer, constantly employed by the gentleman or wealthy farmer, is generally much superior to that of the small landholder. Those men are bound by agreements which they must fulfill—they work continually; and although their wages are in some instances nominally very low, and in all much lower than we could wish, still their allowances—in house-rent, grazing, and con-acre—enable them not only to live comfortably, but sometimes to amass considerable sums of money. You always see good pigs, and very often more than two good cows, at their doors. It may not be amiss to say, that, in all instances, they get the feeding of those cows for a rent varying from one guinea per year, when the nominal wages are low, to three shillings a-year, when tenpence a-day is given; thus, at the very highest price, getting for three shillings that accommodation for which Mr Cobden charges his workman twelve pounds! Yet the great object of those men is to get land and become farmers, although they almost invariably suffer by the change. They were before compelled to work to meet their engagements; having become their own masters, they in very many instances neglect their business, and devote the time which ought to be employed in the cultivation of their farms, to the discussion of politics and to the attendance on popular assemblies.

To say that the Irish are unemployed, not from inclination, but from necessity, is absurd;[35] this may sometimes be the case in the towns where the worst class of agricultural labourers reside—men who will not be employed while others can be had. A stranger meets able-bodied men walking about; he is told, and he sees, that there are no resident gentry in the neighbourhood to afford them work; he compassionates their condition; concocts a paragraph, and imputes the misery he witnesses to absenteeism. Let them accompany the idler to his home, and inspect his farm: he will find, out of a holding of from three to four Irish acres, perhaps an acre on which there was no attempt made at all to raise a crop, independent of untilled headlands, amounting to at least fifth of the ground under cultivation in each field. Why does he not employ himself on this land? If he has a lease, there can be no excuse; but even supposing him but tenant-at-will, it can in this instance be no justification. The land unused is not waste land, requiring an expenditure of labour and money, for which he might afterwards reap no advantage from the cupidity of his landlord. This is no such land: it is good, sound, arable land—perhaps the very best he has; and waste, purely and solely for the want of expending on it the labour necessary to prepare it for crop. He pays for it—yet he won't work it: he complains of want of employment, and he walks about with plenty to engage him beneficially for his own interests at home: he takes con-acre, for which he pays high, while he could raise his food on his own farm, if he only took the trouble of collecting manure, or devoting his time to its improvement.

Adjoining mountains and bogs, where the poorest class of the population generally reside, and where there is abundance of ground attached rent-free to each farm, and capable of being rendered profitable at a very little expense—in fact, without any other outlay than the labour required to open drains, and level it—we see scarcely any efforts made at improvement. A Scotchman, or an Englishman, would consider the possession of the land rent-free for three or five years, according to the difficulty of the undertaking, as a sufficient recompense for his trouble; although his time is much more valuable, on account of the higher rate of wages paid him. But an Irishman will consider a twenty-one years' lease as too short a tenure, to justify him in expending the time which he wastes gossiping with his neighbours, or sunning himself at the backs of the ditches, in the profitable employment of adding to what ought to be, if he had industry, his already too small holding. Here is a case in which we conceive legislation might operate much good. If every man who reclaimed ground which did not before pay rent, was guaranteed its possession by law for ten years after the first crop, at a nominal rent of one shilling the acre, it might be an inducement to the tenant to labour: it could be no loss to the landlord, as, if still left in a state of nature it would be useless to him, and after the expiration of the time guaranteed the tenant as remuneration for his trouble, the benefit would be his exclusively. In the case of a tenant-at-will, an arrangement could easily be effected, by which the tenant, if removed from the farm before the expiration of the stipulated term, might receive a just and reasonable compensation for the improvements which he had effected, or an allowance for the loss of the crops which, had he remained, he would still have been entitled to: and thus, without any government outlay, encouragement would be given for the reclamation of that part of the Irish waste lands which would be worth the trouble or expense of cultivation.

We are gravely told, in well-rounded and high-sounding sentences, that "in Ireland famine urges men to take land at any price—they must have it or die;" and that, "when a piece of ground falls out of lease, it becomes a bone of contention amongst some twenty or thirty miserable competitors, who outbid each other, to the great delight and profit of the ruthless and exulting landlord, and to their own utter ruin." If any one takes time to reflect on what he reads in every day's newspaper, he must at once perceive that this statement can have no foundation in fact; if a landlord remove a tenant for non-payment of rent, he finds it difficult to get another to succeed him, (in the disturbed districts it is almost impossible to get any man to do so.) Such is the dread of taking land, from the occupation of which others have been expelled, even on account of owing the most unreasonable arrears, that farms frequently remain waste for years, without any person daring to bid for them. Now if public opinion, and the dread of the punishment which is sure to follow, operate so powerfully in favour of the really blamable person, as to keep his land untenanted, how much more influence will they possess in restraining any man from seeking to obtain the land of another, if that other be unobjectionable in character, solvent in circumstances, and still in possession? Such a thing is never heard of. The landlord, if he were bad enough, might try to induce men to act so; but he could not effect it. If death pursue the man who undertakes to rent unoccupied ground, as in most instances it does, how much more certain would it be to overtake him whose conduct was the means of driving from his home a solvent and industrious person? If a landlord distrain for rent, he can find no bidders for the crops or cattle; how much more difficult will it be for him to obtain bidders for land? We have frequently heard the bad cultivation of the land in Ireland attributed to the constant shifting of the tenantry: we are quite convinced the result of the enquiry now instituted will show how unfounded this supposition is, and that the shifting or removal of the tenants, will be found to be a matter of much more rare occurrence in Ireland than in England. That scarcity and want are periodically experienced in Ireland, is but too true. Those visitations (which, thank God, are not frequent) arise from the failure of the potato crops, and generally occur in those districts most densely populated, and consequently worst tilled; in fact, they are greatly to be attributed to the neglect of the people themselves; who will not take the trouble of using those precautions against rot, which ought always to be adopted on a moist soil or in a mountainous country: but to talk of persons dying in Ireland of starvation is absurd, and bespeaks an utter ignorance of the national character. There are poor-houses; and besides, in Ireland, the hungry man may enter without hesitation, and share without apology in the meal of his more wealthy neighbour; and lodging, humble though it be, is never denied to the houseless or the destitute. Those who accuse Irishmen, of any class or party, of hard-heartedness or inhumanity, had better look at home. In their country we never hear of verdicts of "death from starvation" being returned by coroners' juries; or of the weak and the unfortunate being compelled to seek for shelter in the hollows of decayed trees, or to sleep like brute beasts in the open parks, exposed to the cold and the inclemency of winter. The gentry may neglect their duties in other respects: as regards the performance of charitable acts, they are faultless; the middleman may be exacting—but he is hospitable; and the men who make those groundless charges, would be not a little astonished did they see the multitudes that are still fed (poor-laws notwithstanding) at the big House of the Irish gentleman. We have said that failures of the crops, and scarcity, occur much more frequently in the densely populated parts of the country than in any others, and that those failures arise in a great measure from the neglect of the people themselves. Parts of Mayo, Galway, and Donegal, are the localities most subject to those visitations. In those counties the most miserable class of the peasantry exist; and nothing, we think, can prove more conclusively, that their misfortunes and their wretchedness cannot with justice be attributed to the misconduct of their landlords, but rather to their own, than the undisputed fact, that in those districts in which the people are worst off, the land is set at the lowest rent; and that where the greatest quantity of waste land is unreclaimed, and where that which is under cultivation is worst managed and least attended to, there, invariably, is to be found the greatest amount of unemployed labourers. It may be said they know no better mode of cultivation than what they practise. They do; those are the very men who go, and have from their youth been in the habit of going, to England and Scotland, where they see the benefits arising from a good system of agriculture. They fully appreciate, but won't practise it. The truth is—and this is one of the great sources of Irish misery—that by the constant agitation of which (under one shape or another) he is almost always the victim, the Irish peasant is induced to consider himself as the worst treated of God's creatures; by it he is kept in a continual state of dependence on anticipated events, which leads him to expect the amelioration of his condition by means of political convulsions, rather than by patient and persevering industry.

We need scarcely say how much the sympathy expressed for his situation, and the abuse heaped on his landlord, tend to confirm the Irish peasant in his bad habits. Articles from the English press, and not extracts from the gospel, form the texts of the sermons which are delivered for his instruction: the object of the preacher is not to remove his prejudices, or to eradicate his faults; but to excite his animosities, and to extract his shillings: when peace and mercy are inculcated, it is not because they are commanded, but because they may be expedient.

In those parts in which there are no resident gentry to employ them, to set them an example, and to enforce a respect for the laws, the peasantry indulge in idleness, and engage in politics. They work at home only when it suits their convenience or inclination, and from others they can only procure work (at prices for which they will work) in the harvest and spring. In summer, after they have planted their crops, and made their turf, and set the milk of their cow, (if they have one,) they shut up their houses, send their wives and their families to beg, and betake themselves to England or Scotland to reap the harvest. There, until of late years, they earned the almost incredible sums of £16, sometimes of £20—latterly, competition and other causes have reduced the amount to, on the average, between £4 and £5. Out of this, on their return, they pay the rent of the con-acre which they have taken, while a third of their own holding is waste. With the balance and their oats they pay the landlord, in those cases in which he is so fortunate as to get any rent; and having secured an abundance of potatoes, they sit down to enjoy themselves for the winter. During the night they play cards for geese, turkeys, and herrings; attend dances, where they are enrolled and sworn into secret societies; and devote some hours to the wrecking of the houses, or the castigation of the persons, of those who are obnoxious to them. In the daytime, you find them at the places of public resort or amusement, or lazily and listlessly strolling about those miserable abodes—in whose floors you frequently find stepping-stones to carry you from the entrance to the space occupied by the fire, and before whose doors are those stagnant pools and heaps of filth, so disgusting to every traveller. Could they not remove those? Is it the landlord's fault that they don't? Does he wish their houses to be in such a condition, or encourage them to keep their own persons and those of their children in such a state of dirt and nastiness? Not at all. He does his best to prevail on them to adopt a different system; but his interference in their domestic matters is always looked on as an unjustifiable intrusion; in short, as a sort of minor grievance, and a petty act of oppression. Perhaps it is to be attributed to their poverty? Water, at least, is cheap and abundant in Ireland.

Such is a true and accurate account of the "tenor of those men's lives" and habits; and it is a continuance of this state of things that those who attack the Irish landlords so indiscriminately are, in reality, advocating.

Now, let us suppose that a tract of two thousand acres, set perhaps by the grandfather of the preset owner, and inhabited by a class of tenantry such as we have described, comes on a landlord's hands. It has been let and relet—tied up in settlements—and, until the termination of the lease, there may have been three or four intermediate landlords between the occupant and the proprietor. The present possessor comes to deal with an estate, ruined and almost worthless from mismanagement, over which he could exercise no control, and peopled by a pauper and surplus tenantry, for whose creation he is in noways accountable. This is exactly the condition of those estates, and the position of those landlords, whose treatment and whose acts have been latterly so much commented on. And we will now ask those who blame others so much, candidly to tell us what they would advise to be done—what, if placed in such a situation, they would do themselves. They will, no doubt, at once say, "Remove some, give them the means of going to the colonies, and make the rest comfortable." Why, that is exactly what the landlords have been endeavouring to do, and for which they have been denounced. This is just what Lord Lorton, Colonel Windham, and others, did; and for doing which they were designated "miscreants." If the tenantry were removed, even to better their own condition, the dues of the priest, and the physical force at the command of the agitator, would be lessened—and this would never answer. "Well, then, if this mode of management be not popular, leave all on the land, build them comfortable houses, and insist on a proper mode of cultivation. In Belgium and France men live on smaller portions of land in comfort, why should they not in Ireland? Lay out money in affording them employment, pay them for draining and sewering—the benefit will be ultimately yours." The answer is obvious. It would require more money than the property is worth to build good houses for all; and, if built, they would soon go to ruin from the habits of the people. If they possessed the land in fee, the occupants, from their numbers, could not exist upon it. The landlord cannot make them emulate the Belgian or the Frenchman in industry. The produce of the orchards he may plant will be stolen, and the trees broken and destroyed, to obtain the fruit. They will not exert themselves to raise many things which are sources of profit to the poor man in this and other countries; or if they did, they would have no market—they would obtain no price for them. And why? Because their own misconduct prevents the establishment of any manufactures, or the outlay of any money amongst them. Who will carry his machinery to a country where—though he may be a good master and a kind friend, though he may give occupation to hundreds and diffuse wealth among thousands—his spindles may be stopped at the beck of a priest, and his machinery left to rust at the dictate of Mr O'Connell. Independent men do not wish to lose all self-control—to sacrifice all right of private judgment; and he who dares to assert his own opinions, or to defy the behests of the "Liberator," has no business to betake himself to Ireland. As to giving employment in sewering and draining—which would benefit the estate—it is not every man who can afford to set his land at a cheap rate, and afterwards to expend his income for the immediate benefit of the occupier. But even this has been attempted. Lord Lansdowne tried to accomplish it on his Irish estate; but the steward he sent to superintend the work was noticed to quit, and driven out of the country, by the very persons for whose benefit those improvements were planned—by the very men who were to be paid for their execution. Under such circumstances as we have stated, in many instances the fear of death compels the landlord to abandon all idea of improvement. He must submit to sacrifice his rent, because those in possession can't or won't pay him; and, if he removes them, he can find no one to succeed them: and, in addition to his other consolations, he has the pleasure of seeing himself described as a monster more ruthless than any Russian despot; while some hut, the erection of which he dared not have prevented, is described, perhaps sketched and stuck in a book, as an incontrovertible proof of the miserable condition to which his rapacity and neglect have reduced his unhappy dependents.

No direct legislation can affect the social condition of Ireland; before you can hope to benefit the country, you must establish tranquillity, and inspire the peasantry with a due respect for the law, and a just estimate of the rights of private property. The question is—by what means are those things to be accomplished? You may give land at a lower price than it now brings, but you will not thereby cause any perceptible change in the habits of the people. They may be wealthier, but they will not be cleanlier. Their rents may be better paid, but the peasant will still live on the potato. The filthy cabin will exist, and the cow and the pig will feed at the same board, and occupy the same apartment as the owner, until you elevate the moral and social feelings of the man, and teach him to require as a necessary what he now looks on as a superfluous luxury.

Much of the poverty of the Irish peasantry has been attributed to the con-acre system. But if this system were not found, by the persons who practise it, to be more beneficial, and less laborious, than raising crops from their own land, it would not be persevered in. In those counties in which con-acres are scarce, the cry is, that the people are starved, because they can't have them. Where they are abundant, they are impoverished by the prices they pay for them. The Terryalt system, in the south, originated in the gentlemen farmers refusing to break up their land, and in the people assembling in mobs, digging the ground, thereby rendering it unfit for pasture, and compelling the owners to let it for potatoes. It may be said, how could they avoid doing this? They had no land to raise potatoes on, and they must have them or die. This is not the case. The only persons who could be so circumstanced are the day-labourers; and to them it must, personally, be a matter of indifference what land was, or was not broken: for, by their agreements, those gentlemen and farmers who employ them, are bound to provide them with potato land; consequently they would not risk their lives to procure what was already guaranteed them. Those agrarian disturbances originated with small farmers, whose own farms were not half cultivated; or tradesmen, who would not have been so anxious to procure con-acres, if they did not find them in general a much cheaper mode of procuring their staple commodity than by having recourse to the markets. The first use a servant boy or girl makes of their earnings, is to plant con-acres, not for subsistence, but for sale. Half an acre of potatoes is generally the foundation of the fortune. The rent paid for potato ground has been enormously magnified. Mr Wiggins sets it down at £12 per acre. It may let for this price (the plantation acre) in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, Belfast, or some other large cities; where, from the contiguity of the market, the produce of a good acre will be worth from £40 to £60, according to the rate of prices. But, in the rural districts, such a price is never heard of; and it is only by the prices in those districts that the condition of the people can be affected. From £5 to £7 and £8 will be found the usual prices; and we should be glad to know what English farmer would give upwards of one acre three roods of his best land, well tilled and highly manured, at such a price, the renter only holding it for one crop, and paying no taxes whatever. The average produce per acre of good con-acre will be, at least, twenty tons of eating or marketable potatoes, independent of a large quantity fit for seed, and for the feeding of pigs; the value of those latter will greatly over-pay the expense of seed, planting, and digging. And taking the price at 1s. per 112 lbs., the renter will have £20 worth of potatoes for £8; a clear profit of £12 on the acre. It, of course, occasionally does occur, that from failure of the seed, rot, or other casualties, the crop may not be worth the rent; in this case an abatement, sufficient to satisfy him, is made to the holder, or it is left on the landlord's hands. Potatoes being a perishable crop, and a species of food which cannot be preserved beyond a season, their price fluctuates more than that of any other kind of provisions. Last year the price in this "country of famine" was 4d. for 112 lbs.; in general the prices vary from 1s. (seldom less) to 2s., and sometimes 3s., the 112 lbs.

In Ireland, good con-acres are looked on by the peasantry as a certain source of wealth; here they are considered as a main cause of their poverty. Who are the best judges—the people who use, or those who read about them? But whatever may be the merit or demerit of the con-acre system, (and we are none of its advocates,) it is unjust to charge its practice on the landlords. They have nothing whatever to do with it; it is a mode of dealing between one class of tenantry and another. The assertion in the "Cry from Ireland," that the peasant gives his manure, and pays 18s. an acre besides, is too ridiculous to require confutation.

But suppose the rents in Ireland were exorbitant, who would be to blame?—the landlords who accepted them, or the people who swore to their extraordinary moderation? Let us look to the registry courts:—[36]

At that time it was Mr O'Connell's object to attain political power, by proving the lands were set at a cheap rate; now it is his object to obtain popularity, by declaring that they are set at a rate far too dear. Which of his assertions are we to believe?

It may be said that only a few, comparatively speaking, of the landholders registered their votes; and that, from the value of the holdings of a few, it would be unfair to draw a conclusion as to the terms on which the land was held by the bulk of the people. This objection could only be urged by a person unacquainted with Ireland; for any man who attended the quarter-sessions there, must know that, if all the persons for whom the priests and liberal clubs served notice, and whose qualifications they were prepared to support, had come forward to claim and establish their rights to the franchise, the number on the register would have been quite as great as (if it did not exceed) that of the old forty-shilling freeholders. If the claims of those who did apply, and who, although rejected, were most vigorously sustained by the agitators, had been substantiated, the constituency would have been quite as numerous as the most ardent patriot could desire.

From whatever causes the wretched condition of Ireland may arise, want of tenure cannot be included amongst them; for if length of tenure secured prosperity, Ireland should have been prosperous indeed. In no country were such long leases heretofore given: from three lives and thirty-one years to three lives and sixty-one years, were the terms usually granted; and at this moment there are many leases still in existence, in all parts of the country, made towards the close of the last century, and held directly from the owners. And although the lands held under these are at a rent very much below even the present depressed value, and of course greatly under what they would have fetched in the time of the war, still we do not find their possessors generally comfortable or independent; but, on the contrary, they are in most instances in a worse condition than those tenants whose rent has varied with the times, and been influenced by the rise or fall in the value of agricultural produce. Seeing, then, that men placed in the most favourable circumstances, both as regards the moderation of their rents and the length of their tenures, are generally more wretched in the appearance of their dwellings, and more neglectful of the cultivation of their farms, than those at the mercy of landlords, represented to be the most tyrannical on earth—we must seek the cause of the degraded state of the people elsewhere than at the door of the owners of the soil. Until within the last few years, (and those are the years in which the landlords have most exerted themselves, and in which the tenantry, who would be influenced by them, have most improved,) leases of at least twenty-one years, and one life, were always given, which not unfrequently prolonged the tenure to sixty or seventy years. And nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the refusal to grant leases, latterly practised by some Irish landlords, has been the cause of any hardship or suffering to the people. The contrary is the fact; and no men know this better than those who so loudly exclaim against the practice. It is a great mistake to imagine that leases are in no instance granted: the truth is, that they are still very generally given; and that in a great majority of those instances where they are withheld, they are so withheld, not with the intention of taking advantage of the tenant's improvements, or depriving him of his political rights, (as the English people are led to believe,) but for the purpose of compelling him to improve and to live comfortably, in spite of his own predilections. On the best managed estates in Ireland, and those where green-cropping has been most generally brought into operation, there are no leases; yet on those properties the tenantry are invariably the most independent and contented. On the estates of the Earl of Gosford, and other proprietors in the north, under the able superintendence of Mr Blacker, (whose conduct is the theme of universal approbation,) no leases are given until the tenant shows, by his industry and his exertions, that he deserves one; and then, after he has for some years cultivated his farm in a proper manner, and is taught to estimate the value of an improved system, he gets his lease as the reward of his industry, without the slightest advance in his rent. From the bad feelings implanted in the minds of the peasantry, they generally prefer living in comparative misery, and allowing their land to remain in a state of nature, whether they have leases or not, rather than make any improvements which might tend to the landlords' ultimate advantage, even though these improvements would produce immediate benefit to themselves; and this bad feeling is actually supported by the undisguised enmity, which unfortunately, of late years, subsists between the gentry and the priests. We are far from saying that acts of oppression and injustice may not sometimes be perpetrated by landlords and agents. Amongst so numerous a body, there must be bad men: and if an instance, lately mentioned by Mr O'Connell, be true—namely, that of an agent who set a farm occupied by an industrious and well-behaved tenantry, who owed no rent, to an extensive grazier, at a rent of four pounds a year less than the resident tenants offered to secure—we must at once admit that nothing could be more heartless or cruel. But then we are bound in justice to state, that the agent so accused was the bosom friend of the great agitator himself, and a leading member of the Repeal Association, which has constituted itself the protector, par excellence, of the Irish people. May we not fairly suppose that, when Mr O'Connell denounces his friends, he would not hesitate to drag his political opponents to the bar of public opinion; and that the paucity of facts which he is able to adduce against the landed gentry, is a proof that they have not neglected the duties of their station, in so flagrant a manner as his wholesale denunciations would lead us to expect?

How can we be surprised at Irish absenteeism? Can we expect that any man who can avoid it, will willingly expose the lives of himself and his family, by taking up his residence amongst the "Thugs" of Tipperary? If an absentee comes to reside personally to superintend the improvement of his property, and takes part of his own estate to make a demesne and build a mansion, he must dispossess someone—and, like Lord Norbury, he is shot. Should he escape his fate, his motives are misrepresented, and his anxious endeavours to give occupation and employment to the people, are converted into the worst crimes; because they can only be carried into effect by changing the condition of men from pauper and idle tenants to that of regularly worked and well paid labourers. And what object can he have, in risking death in the cause of those who suffer themselves to be so misdirected and misled? Local influence he can have none—that will be monopolized by the priest; political importance he cannot expect, in a country where the representation is placed exclusively in the hands of the Roman Catholic bishops.[37]

Mr Waller resided, and employed the labourers in his neighbourhood; but he took a part of his own land into his own hands—he ejected tenants who were unable or unwilling to pay their rents, and he gave them compensation, and to such as remained employment. What of that? He dared to occupy his own property, and for this he suffered years of persecution. His own expenditure, and his wife's charities, were no protection; and at length, while enjoying the comforts of his home, he and the amiable and unoffending females of his family, were cruelly butchered on his own hearth: and though, in the conflict, their assailants must have been wounded and marked, they have not as yet been discovered. May we not ask why is this? How comes it that, in a Christian country, murder is tolerated, nay openly approved? that the assassin is protected and concealed, instead of being delivered up, and made amenable to the offended laws of his country?[38] Can the ministers of that religion professed by the vast majority of the people, have faithfully discharged their sacred obligations, if men be found, professing the religion of Christ and understanding its precepts, willing to enrol themselves as the hired bravoes of a "Black Sheep Society," and to butcher their neighbours for a petty reward? The Roman Catholic religion condemns murder as strongly as the Protestant religion; yet how happens it, that a whole community professing that faith winks at the crimes of the guilty? This total demoralization we look on as the worst feature of the case. There are, and always must be, bad men in every society; but how the great mass of the people could be brought to tolerate the commission of crimes amongst them, which cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance, is more than we can comprehend. Had the priests devoted that time which they spent in exciting the passions and misleading the judgment of their flocks, in the inculcation of the divine precept of brotherly love—had they exercised that influence which they undoubtedly possess in calming the passions and enlightening the minds of their people—the condition of their country would now be widely different from what it is; and surely their bishops might have been better employed in remedying the neglect of their subordinates, than in attending political meetings, and delivering postprandial orations, savouring more of the braggart boastings of a drunken drumboy, than of the deliberate opinions of a dignified ecclesiastic. In their zeal as politicians, the Roman Catholic clergy have forgotten their duties as priests; and they are now beginning to get a foretaste of the consequences: they became mob leaders at elections and popular meetings—they rode the whirlwind, "can they direct the storm?" The ruffian tasting blood in beating the electors, soon undertook business on his own account. The step from savage assault to actual murder, is but ideal. The man who encouraged, or connived at, the lesser crime, could scarcely expect to prevent the perpetration of the greater and the "boy" who commenced by applying "gentle force" to a reluctant voter, became in the fulness of his crimes the avowed assassin. The priest used him as "the bully"—he may repudiate, but he dare not denounce, him as "the murderer."

In the late debate, two publications on the state of Ireland were recommended to special attention; the one, "A Cry from Ireland," by Lord John Russell—the other, Mr Wiggins's book, by the Marquis of Normanby. The first we should scarcely have noticed, (the noble lord mentioned it with so much diffidence,) but for the impression it seems subsequently to have made on the mind of Sir R. Peel; but when we found a noble ex-lord-lieutenant recommending, as trustworthy and instructive, a book written on a subject which engrosses much of the public attention, we felt it our duty at once to apply to his "fountain of knowledge."

We cannot say that we have "read with attention" the whole of this whimsical production: few there are, we believe, who could command patience enough to wade through such a mass of contradictory absurdity; but we have selected such parts as we could find at all bearing on the subject Mr Wiggins professes to write upon; and we shall transcribe some few passages, if not for the benefit, at least for the amusement, of our readers; merely premising, that this gentleman gives us no data on which to found our opinions, and no guarantee for the truth of his statements but his own assertion. First, as regards the amount of rent charged in the north and south, Mr Wiggins says—

We refer to our previous statements, founded on unquestionable authority, to show how perfectly erroneous this "view of the case" is. The direct contrary is the fact; land is set for at least one third more in the Protestant and peaceable north, than in the Roman Catholic and turbulent south. As a specimen of our author's style when he becomes jocose, and of his veracity when he describes the conduct of Irish landlords, we give a graphic sketch, representing the mode of letting land in the sister country—

£4 the acre!!! this certainly beats any thing we ever heard of before; and until now we thought it a service of danger for any man to bid for another's holding, or even to take an unoccupied one; but Mr Wiggins has made many discoveries which are new to us, and not the least extraordinary is, that "Lycurgus gave laws to the Athenians."!!!

One of the great panaceas of Lord Normanby's protÉgÉ is, that the land should be "set at full rents, on sensible leases"—which he proceeds to describe as leases for not less than twenty-one years. We have heard of many longer leases than those of twenty-one years, we never heard of any shorter being granted; and as the usual course is also to add a life—which may, and not unfrequently does, prolong the tenure to sixty or seventy years—we think that, if "sensible" leases had any effect, Ireland would have been long since contented.

Lord Normanby is reported to have stated as facts, on the authority of Mr Wiggins, "that in Ireland, where the saleable produce of a farm was £150, the share of the landlord in rent was £100; while on the other hand, in England, if the produce was £300, the share of the landlord was still £100." Mr Wiggins, in his "able work," also shows, that in the shape of county cess the charge was nearly double in Ireland what it was in England. It is difficult to form any accurate idea of the relative amount of the county cess paid in Ireland, and of the local taxes in England, as in both countries they vary in each different locality. In Ireland, the exact amount of county cess levied in each barony, can be easily ascertained by reference to the respective county books; but in England, as the local taxation is in a great measure put on by vestry, it would be an arduous task to strike an average.

In Ireland, the county cess varies in every barony, according to the amount of public works executed in each, or according to the state of crime in each district. In peaceable counties, and those which do not border on the Shannon, the county cess will vary from tenpence to one shilling an acre, half-yearly; while in disturbed districts, and in those counties adjoining the Shannon, it will amount to much more. In the first, because of the large sums obliged to be levied off them, as compensation to those whose cattle were maliciously houghed, or whose houses were burned; and in the latter, because of the great boon (the grant to improve the river) bestowed on Ireland by that government of which Lord Normanby was a prominent member. In the former case, those who pay highly have only themselves to blame; if they were well conducted, and discouraged the commission of crime, as all well-disposed men ought to do, they would not have to bear those additional burdens. In the latter, the grand-juries have no control; they must assess to repay the principal of the money advanced to them, and discharge the interest. Here we may be permitted to remark, that we believe, since publicity was given to their adjudications on fiscal matters, there is quite as little jobbing in Ireland as in this country. As a proof of the disposition of the gentry to reduce the expenditure to the lowest possible amount, we will state, what every gentleman serving on grand-juries in Ireland must be cognisant of—namely, that not more than one-third of the presentments approved of by the rate-payers, are ever passed by the grand-juries; and yet road sessions, at which the principal rate-payers have power to vote, were instituted to check the extravagance of the proprietors.

The difficulty in ascertaining the proportion of the produce of the soil taken as rent by the landlords in either country, exists principally as regards the large holdings; because in England a great proportion of the farms are under tillage, while in Ireland, if not the whole, by far the greater part of all the extensive farms are under grass; and the profits of the grazier vary so much, that it is hard to form any correct estimate of the proportion of the produce taken by the landlord as rent, and that left to the tenant as interest for the money employed in the purchase of stock. But in the smaller class of holdings, we can have no difficulty in coming pretty near the truth; and as it is the grievances of the class of men by whom those small farms are held which require examination, the amount taken from them as rent, and left to then as remuneration for their labours, is what is most requisite to be ascertained. Let us, then, take a farm of twelve Irish acres, at 30s. an acre.

According to the Irish mode of cultivating, it will be cropped and stocked as follows:—

This is but a rough calculation, and an underrated one as regards the profits of the tenant; but it serves our purpose sufficiently, and shows that, instead of taking two-thirds of the produce, the landlord takes not one-fourth—much less than the amount assumed to be taken in England. But when we consider the additional imposts which the English farmer has to pay in tithes, poor-rates, turnpikes, &c., we must at once perceive how very much less the Irish tenant is charged in comparison to what he is subject to. But if the farm, stocked and cropped as we have above described it, (and it is the usual mode,) were cultivated as it ought to be—if, instead of having one-half under natural pasture, it were tilled after the Scotch or English system, and one-half or two-thirds of what is now comparatively unproductive pasture, were under green crops—we need not say how much the saleable produce would be increased; and consequently, how much the tenant's profits would be augmented. Yet surely that it is not so cultivated, is not the landlord's fault. If he has given a lease, he has no control further than to exact his rent; if he supply instruction, it may not be received; if he set a good example, it may not be followed. If the tenant will not consult his own interests, the landlord is not to be held as responsible for the consequences of his neglect. The fair way to calculate in this particular would be, not to take the saleable produce at what it is, raised under a deficient system and negligent cultivation; but at what it might be, if the tenant had but industry, and would but do his duty.

In an article on the Irish fisheries, in the Quarterly Review for September last, (page 475,) we find it stated, that "the agricultural produce of Ireland was, in 1832, estimated at £36,000,000 per annum, issuing out of 14,603,473 acres of land—a return nearly one-half less than that rendered by an equal number of English acres; and this with five labourers employed in Ireland, where two only are required in England." The rental of Ireland is ascertained to be above £12,000,000; and thus we see that in fact the Irish landlord only receives the one-third of the saleable produce, raised by his slothful and negligent tenant, as rent. Let the produce be made equal to that of England, (and with common industry this might be made to exceed it,) and the share of the produce extracted as rent would only be about one-sixth. Yet Lord Normanby "burkes" this correct information, and clutches on the vague and unfounded assertions of Mr Wiggins, merely for the purpose of damaging the character of a body of men, who had already been sufficiently injured by the consequences of his misgovernment.

We shall briefly advert to a few more of the items in the catalogue of Irish tenants' grievances.

In Ireland the saleable produce consists almost generally of oats, butter, potatoes, and pigs; for which there is a ready market in every village and town. As those markets are very seldom more than four or five miles apart; and as, moreover, horse-hire and human labour are at least fifty per cent cheaper in Ireland than in England—we are at a loss to discover how "the cost of preparing, and taking to market," can be fifteen per cent more in the cheaper than in the dearer country.

Mr Wiggins makes one statement founded on truth, and we willingly give Lord Normanby the benefit of it. "In England, labour is effectual, and men skilful: in Ireland, three men are required for one in England." And we would respectfully ask his lordship who is to be blamed for this. Is it the landowner?—who, though he nominally pay less, in reality pays more wages than the Englishman for the cultivation of a given quantity of ground, and who would, if he could, for his own sake remedy the evil. Or does the blame lie at the door of Lord Normanby's own protÉgÉs, the priests and agitators?—those men who held the reins of power, and the keys of prisons, during his administration; and who, by their pestilent conduct, have raised the minds of the peasantry from their natural occupation, and taught them to hope for affluence and independence from other sources than industry and employment. Those labourers, when working on task in England or Scotland, are found to be quite equal to English or Scotch labourers: why are they not so when at home? Lord Normanby's "unquestionable authority" is so very contradictory in his assertions, that, had he not received the sanction of his lordship's approbation, his own conflicting statements must have effectually destroyed his credibility, but for the encomiums passed on it. In one passage he condemns the landlords for the exorbitance of their rents; while in the next he makes it a matter of pride and gratification that he has himself, during his management, raised the rental of the property under his control at least one-third—while the adjoining estate is much more favourably circumstanced, and much more cheaply let, though by no means so prosperous.

When a nobleman, so long and so intimately connected with the country whose interests are under discussion, as Lord Normanby was with Ireland, and who, from the position which he occupied and the opportunities which he possessed, ought to be particularly well informed on the question at issue, solemnly assures us, from his place in Parliament, and in a debate which he himself has originated, that the landlord and tenant question is one on which the most profound ignorance exists in this country, and that there never was a government which had so little local knowledge as the present, and which, consequently, was so ill fitted to legislate on the subject—when he laments other men's ignorance, and glorifies himself on his own particular knowledge—when, we say, a nobleman so circumstanced as the Marquis of Normanby, does all this, and at the same time recommends a guide, by whom the ignorant may be enlightened and the blind led, we are bound to believe that he has accurately ascertained the trustworthiness of the person under whose guidance he now would place us; and that he has maturely considered, and carefully proved, the correctness of those statements on which he would found legislation, by the test of his own experience. We are bound to believe (and we do) that the noble lord is firmly convinced of the accuracy of Mr Wiggins's views and principles, because they are exactly similar to those on which, during his government, he always acted. During his rule, the cause of the mob was every thing, and the cause of the gentry was nothing. Can we, then, be surprised at the state in which we find Ireland, and the difficulty experienced in hitting off the measures requisite for the emergency—when we see "the most beloved and popular viceroy that ever administered the government," and the one "who was said, beyond all others, to be best acquainted with the wants and wishes of that country," so profoundly ignorant of its most simple statistics—simple, it is true, but still bearing most importantly on a great and momentous question?

We fear that, in his viceregal "progresses," the noble marquis was too much excited by the hearty cheers which greeted him, and too much engaged by the brilliant eyes that beamed upon him, to attend to the more ostensible and more serious duties of his office; and that he devoted the time which, if properly employed, might have enabled him to arrive at the truth, in chucking the chins and patting the heads of the pretty frail ones, to whom he addressed valedictory admonitions as he released them from those dungeons to which the over-strict laws of their country had (no doubt unjustly) consigned them.

In the observations which we shall make on the pamphlet entitled "A Cry from Ireland," we wish to be distinctly understood—we do not undertake the task of showing up its glaring and wilful falsehoods for the purpose of exculpating Mr Shee, the principal person whose conduct is arraigned in it. He is openly, and boldly assailed; and if he be either unable or unwilling to defend his character, he is unworthy of sympathy or support. We undertake this duty, from higher and more important motives than the exculpation of any individual. The conduct of the Irish gentry is assailed through Mr Shee; and we wish to show that no landlord, however ill inclined he may be, could practise such legal tyranny as is imputed to this man. The administration of justice has been impugned—we wish to show how unjustly; and this we shall be able to do, even from the statements made by this wholesale libeller himself. The conduct of the government has been vilified, because they are accused of supplying Mr Shee with a police force, under whose protection, and by whose assistance, he is said to perpetrate the most glaring felonies in the open day—we leave the defence of their participation in Mr Shee's enormities to her Majesty's ministers, when they are called to account, as no doubt they will be, for allowing a force, paid for the protection of her Majesty's subjects, to be employed as the author of this pamphlet states them to be, in the following instance:—

Here we have it asserted that an undoubted and most audacious felony has been committed, and that the police force not only protected the aggressors, but actually assisted in the perpetration of the crime. Surely this is a case in which immediate punishment must have followed, if an appeal lad been made to the law. It admitted of no excuse. A man, without a shadow of right, destroys and carries of the materials of another man's house. The police force not only do not prevent, but they assist him. There is a stipendiary magistrate, but he does not interfere; a petty sessions court, but no recourse is had to it; and, strange to say, there is Daniel O'Connell, to whom every thing is known, and he is silent; the two Messrs Butler, the members for the county, and they are mute; Lord J. Russell assails the conduct of the ministry towards Ireland—here was a case more flagrant than any he brought forward; he knows it, for he recommends the book in which it is stated—he dares not bring it forward, for no doubt he enquired, and found it was untrue. To have it refuted, would not answer his purposes or those of O'Connell, his ally. He recommends the book as an authority to those who wish to see how the Irish are treated by their landlords; and, receiving his sanction, it gets into circulation, and obtaius belief for, others in addition to the many calumnies already propagated against the Irish gentry. The author tells us—

And right clumsily has he performed the duty assigned to him. Had his cunning been equal to his malignity, he would have acted with more prudence. He would not have recklessly asserted in one place what his own admissions refute in another. He would not have charged the most talented, distinguished, and impartial law-officers of the crown with having strained the law to protect a delinquent because he was a Protestant—and afterwards shown that the conduct of this man was condemned by those very persons accused of partiality towards him; and that his illegal acts were punished by those very tribunals to which (he asserts) no poor man need think of applying for redress. He, however, does his best to cover those glaring inconsistencies. He breaks the thread of his narrative, and intersperses his stories in such a manner, that a casual reader, who has not time or inclination to examine or compare them, may easily be deceived and misled. For the purpose of showing the reliance to be placed on Lord John Russell's authority, we shall take up one case, (that of Patrick Ring,) and follow it out to its conclusion.

From this statement it would appear that this Mr Shee distrained illegally, that the tenant sought the protection of the law, and that he obtained damages to the amount of £12. This may appear an inconsiderable sum; but when it is considered that an officer entitled a "replevinger," resides in almost every town, that the stock or implements were not removed from the premises, and that Ring, if he exerted himself, could not be deprived of their use for a second day—we must admit it was a fair remuneration for his trouble. Well—but this Mr Shee, with the knowledge of his former misconduct, and its punishment before him, again seizes: and this time he commits a felony, as well as an illegal act; for he carries off the tenant's manure, and appropriates it to his own use, without going through any legal form whatever. The tenant obtained justice before; but now (with a still stronger case) he refuses to bring his action, which, in the quarter-sessions court, would have cost him 2s. 6d. He is quite aware of his rights, for he defended them successfully before; yet for some reason or another, studiously concealed, he now remains inactive.[40]

Is every person so silly as to believe that this Mr Shee, who was more than once successfully prosecuted for assaults and illegal acts, would not again be brought to justice for such a serious breach of the law as that of forcibly carrying off another man's property. The criminal prosecution would only have cost one shilling; and can we believe he would a third time subject himself to an action for illegal distress, with the rent-days specified in the lease well known to him?

But all the assertions of this paid maligner sink into insignificance compared with what follows. We know not which to be most amazed at—the recklessness, or the stupid ignorance of the man.

Here it is stated, in the first place, that from the summer assizes 1842, to the same period in 1843, Ring was nine times proceeded against by ejectment. Now the landlord could only proceed by ejectment in the quarter-sessions' court, or in the superior courts. The quarter-sessions' courts are held but four times in the year, namely, in January, April, July, and October. The sessions were only held three times within the period during which Ring is said to have been nine times sued by ejectment; and consequently, if Mr Shee were even inclined, it would be impossible for him to have proceeded more than three times against him in the sessions court. But if he instituted his suit in the superior courts, (if defence were taken, as clearly was the case,) he could only have proceeded twice, "for the ejectment served at November should be tried at the spring assizes, and the one served subsequently at the summer assizes;" and the production of any process from the superior courts, or the proof that such was had recourse to, would effectually bar the landlord from proceeding in the inferior courts. He could not proceed in both at the same time; and thus we see that it would be impossible for any landlord, however oppressive, to have proceeded by ejectment more than three times within the period in which this veracious compiler of grievances positively asserts Shee proceeded nine times. Next, he says, "the crop of 1842 was sold seven different times," and "altogether he had twenty auctions of sale before midsummer of 1843." Now, any proceeding by distress, pending the progress of the ejectment, would have vitiated it and upset it; for the law does not allow two different modes of proceeding for the same debt at the same time; and in no courts is such scrupulous regard paid to the rights of the tenant as in the quarter-sessions courts. But no decree can be granted in ejectment cases until a clear year's rent shall have been proved to be due; and yet we find this man, Patrick Ring, who, it is asserted, owed no arrears of rent up to 1842, and the sale of whose crops and stock paid his rent up to autumn 1842, evicted in summer 1843, when only half a year's rent could have accrued due; and this, too, by a Roman Catholic assistant barrister, (Mr O'Gorman,) a judge above any suspicion, and who, if we are to believe the statement contained in Ring's own letter, was not at all partial to his persecutor.

To show how tyrannically men may act with impunity, (if they be landlords,) he quotes the case of O'Driscoll, who struck a boy with his horsewhip; yet he is obliged to admit, that for doing so he was fined L3 by his brother magistrates, and dismissed from the commission of the peace by the lord-chancellor. To create the desired degree of prejudice against the Irish landlords, it is necessary to impugn the administration of justice; for people here would naturally enough say, when they read of such atrocities, "why don't those men so injured have recourse to the law?" Therefore it must be shown (at any risk) that the law is no impediment in the way of a tyrannical landlord. The falsehoods may not be immediately detected; and in the mean time the object may be achieved. Accordingly we find that a landlord can thus summarily dispose of an obnoxious tenant. This Mr Shee was fired at: our author has his doubts—although it appears, by his own account of the trial, that slugs were lodged in his hand, and that his hat was perforated—and he adds—

We suppose we need scarcely point out the absurdity of such a statement as this. Some magistrate must have committed this man; the jailer could not receive him without a committal, nor set him at large [42] without a discharge; although, from the account given, the inference may be easily drawn that, on his own will, Shee had thrown Ring into prison. If falsely imprisoned, he had his action against the magistrate who committed him. The committal, which the jailer holds for his own security, would discover the person who had acted so illegally. If any man acted as Shee is said to have done in this instance, the law is not to be blamed—for it forbids such conduct: the government officers who permitted it to be violated, are the really guilty parties. And here again we may ask—why were not the government called on to explain the conduct of their officials, by Lord John Russell, who read and recommended the book to the attention of Sir Robert Peel? But in addition to the necessity of having Ring thrown into jail, to exhibit the power of the landlords, it was necessary, for our author's purposes, that he should be put out of the way, in order to account for an apology given by the editor of a local newspaper to this Mr Shee.

The juries of the county Dublin are certainly the most independent, and least likely to be prejudiced in favour of a landlord, that can be found. They are in a great measure composed of wealthy merchants, who reside in the neighbourhood of the city; and every one knows that a judge's summons would have procured the attendance of Ring at the trial; but it was necessary to find an excuse for this abject apology.

We cannot, in the present instance, impute the conduct of this truth-telling authority to ignorance; we must attribute it to his wish to make the British public believe that all those civil bill processes were at the suit of landlords against tenants—to the desire or the necessity he felt himself under of sacrificing all principle to the objects for the accomplishment of which he was employed. He must know that nineteen-twentieths of those civil bills are actions for debts brought by shopkeepers against their customers, or by one peasant against another—for money lent, or for the price of provisions sold them: he must know (if he knows any thing) that perhaps not fifty, out of the whole 4318, are for rent; and that, where rent is at all sued for by process, it is only in cases where the landlord takes the tenant's I O U, in order to give him more time for what was long since due. The landlord can at any time distrain for his rent; what object, then, would he have in incurring expense, and encountering delay, to procure a decree, which, when obtained, would only restrict his former power? All this does he know; and yet he quotes the number of processes issued by the most litigious people on earth against each other, as a proof of the tyranny of the landlords, and as the fruitful source of poverty and crime.

We have to apologise for the length of our remarks on those two productions. The one contains, we doubt not, the sincere opinions of a well-meaning, but very silly gentleman; while the other bears upon its unprincipled statements the stamp of premeditated dishonesty. Yet it is upon authorities such as these that the Irish gentry are to be condemned, and their estates confiscated; upon authorities such as these that the interests of men, whose greatest crime is attachment to British connexion, are to be sacrificed to greedy agitators, and a ferocious and idle people. Sir Robert Peel may, perhaps, without danger, give an extension of the franchise—the corporations are all, with one solitary exception, (Belfast,) as revolutionary as they can be made; and the Roman Catholic bishops may not be able to obtain political ascendancy over any more counties than those already subject to their sway; but we would call on him to pause and consider well before he disgusts the best friends of England, by lending attention to the unfounded statements of revolutionary priests, promulgated by mercenary writers; or the legislative quackeries of a disappointed, dishonest, and despicable faction.

Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work.