CONTENTS. Colonization assumes that the land of a country cannot maintain its Colonization, therefore, premature at present; being an abstraction of CONTENTS. Remedies suggested to enable and encourage the Tenant to improve.- Relations of Landlord and Tenant.-Bill for improving, now before Parliament, insufficient.-Legislation required :- 1. Compensation for Tenants' Improvements. 2. Encouragement to long leases. Summary of Argument. THE RIGHTS OF INDUSTRY IN IRELAND, &c. SIR, LETTER I. [TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE.] I WAS gratified to find, in your article of Friday on the Rights of Industry, so near an accordance with the views to which I have endeavoured to direct attention in the essay under that title which you obligingly notice. The subject is so important at the present period, that perhaps you will allow me the space necessary for clearing up one or two points upon which, if any difference exists between us, it will be removed, I am confident, by a few words of explanation. We agree in this, that the true key to the leading economical difficulty of the day is to be sought in the enlargement of the field of profitable employment for capital and labour, by means of the development of the natural and, looking to the world at large, inexhaustible resources of land. For a populous country of limited extent, whose soil is fully cultivated, Colonization is, (as you say), the natural, obvious, and amply-sufficient mode of effecting the desired object. That opinion I have not only always concurred in, but perseveringly urged as a reply in full to the arguments of the anti-populationists. But while regarding and maintaining colonization to be a certain ultimate resource, always available even under the worst circumstances, and, if wisely and systematically carried out, sufficient to prevent any continuous suffering from the narrowness of the field of industry at home, I have thought it desirable to call attention to the fact that as regards ourselves, at least-we have by no means exhausted the resources of our own territory, or even approached the limits of the profitable and productive application of capital and labour to the soil of our twin islands; that the overcrowding of labour and congestion of capital, so generally complained of, and which occasions the destitution and discontent of our industrial classes, are in a large degree owing to unwise artificial restrictions, imposed by ourselves, to the free exchange, or the free use of our native soil. I quoted, as illustrations, the notorious paralysis of agricultural industry in Ireland, and the sinful neglect and waste of its natural fertility; in both islands, the mischievous results of entails, settlements, and incumbrances, and of tenancies at will, affording no security to improving tenants-influences less prohibitory here, no doubt, than in Ireland-but still opposing a powerful impediment to the progress of agriculture. You say, "the real difficulty is to get the land, not to make bargains about it." True! It is exactly what I urge against the present artificial law-trammelled system of land-ownership and land-tenure, that it prevents industry, i. e. our labourers and capitalists, who are ransacking the world for employment, from "getting at" the land which lies, some of it wholly waste, and most of it If cultivated, under their feet. What prevents the unemployed capital and labour of Ireland-for there is a great deal of concealed capital there, besides the millions that are annually invested in Savings' Banks and the British funds, and the perhaps larger amount that dribbles off yearly to America in the pockets of emigrants, who despair of being able to invest their savings profitably in their native land,—what, I ask, prevents these elements of production being invested in the improved culture of Ireland? Simply that the land can't be "got at," owing to the law having locked it up in Chancery, or other entanglements, so inextricably, that neither its nominal owners nor its occupiers are able to make the most of it. The latter have no tenure sufficient to give them heart to improve. The former are incapacitated by entails or incumbrances from effecting improvements themselves, or conceding encouraging terms of holding to their tenants. These are the "difficulties" which the law imposes, and which legislation might remove. Until this be done, and the natural resources of the home soil developed somewhat more fully than they are at present, colonization is obviously premature. Colonization must abstract capital and labour for investment on a foreign shore which might be most profitably, and with far greater national benefit, invested within our own territory. This is the consideration which I am desirous of impressing on those whose minds are now occupied in the endeavour to solve "the social problem of the day." It is true, as you observe, that in some countries where land is more freely placed at the disposal of the industrious masses, destitution, nevertheless, is found. But its existence there may, I think, be sufficiently B 2 |