SIR,

LETTER III.

CONFINING my present argument to the vast field for the profitable employment of labour and capital which might be opened in the waste lands of Ireland, if placed at the disposal of industry by legislative action, I will begin by noticing the cursory objection with which the proposal is in the first instance usually met, and which you have reproduced in its most simple and general form; viz., that if these wastes could be profitably reclaimed, they would have been reclaimed already.

Now, in the first place, this argument proves too much. It might be just as reasonably said, that the lands at present in tillage or pasture, whether of Ireland or of England itself, cannot be profitably drained or subsoiled, or better cultivated than at present, because it has not been done already. Whereas every one knows the fact to be the reverse. This is, indeed, one of those slashing arguments, by the use of which political economists have so often brought their science into undeserved discredit. A proposition, true only in the abstract, is assumed to hold good under all possible circumstances. Capital, it is said, like water, will always flow in any direction in which a profit is to be made. True enough, if there are no obstructions blocking up the channnels through which alone it could reach the locality where the profit awaits it. Not otherwise. And it is because closet economists choose to ignore the obstacles that have hitherto forbidden the investment of capital, to any

large extent, in such agricultural improvements as are, notwithstanding, capable of affording very large returns, and are proved to be so by the direct evidence of facts and practical authorities, that they are driven to their wits' end by the present uneasy state of society, and throw the blame on nature, and the growth of population, of those evils which faulty institutions and legislative mismanagement have alone occasioned.

In fact, the very point and purpose of the essay on the Rights of Industry" was to call attention to the degree in which obstructions, chiefly of a legal character, and therefore removable by legislation, actually lock up from use at present the natural capabilities of our home soils, and prevent that flow of capital towards their improved cultivation which would assuredly take place under a better arrangement of our land-laws. And yet I find you forgetful of this entire argument, continuing to urge the old story, that capital not having spontaneously taken that direction there can be no profit to be made in it.

Of the impediments which have hitherto prevented the cultivation of the Irish wastes, there are many common likewise to the land at present in tillage or pasture, and the cause of its backward state of cultivation, and deficient productiveness, in spite of great natural fertility. Others are peculiar to the waste lands themselves.

In the first class must be mentioned the indolent, reckless, spendthrift, unbusiness-like habits of the landed proprietors of Ireland, as a class, owing to the long course of partial government and legislation by which they were encouraged to believe that their territorial

rights were independent of all performance of duties towards the people inhabiting their estates, and would be enforced at all hazards, and to the utmost extent, by the overwhelming power of Britain. They have been thus led to rely, both for their rentals and political power, on the multiplication and terrific competition for land of a miserable rack-rented peasantry, to whom no other employment or means of existence was opened, who were set down on the bare sod without a building, or a fence, or a drain executed by the landlord; and yet with no better security, in most cases, for any permanent improvement they might themselves make, than a tenancy at will, determinable at six months' notice! Under such a system, the tenants could scarcely be expected to accumulate or to expend capital. The landlord never for a moment thought of such a thing! Far from it. His habit was to expend more than his income, and hence his estate became encumbered with entails, settlements, mortgages, judgment-bonds, and, perhaps, ultimately, a Chancery receiver, thus depriving him of the power to improve, or to relax his paralyzing gripe upon his tenantry, even if he desired to do so. All these accumulated involvements still further lessened the security of the tenant, and may be said to have prohibited him from investing capital, or even his own labour, in improvements, of the fruits of which a foreclosure, or sale under a decree of Chancery, or the devolution of the estate on a new heir, or a change of agent, or even a caprice of the existing owner, might deprive him at any moment. Then, too, the peasant himself, as a protection against the frightful insecurity of his position, was driven to join in maintaining that agrarian system of intimidation

which, in turn, by rendering life itself insecure, added a further impediment to the investment of capital in the Irish soil. How could agriculture flourish under such a system? And is it possible to argue that because wastes have not been reclaimed, or marshes drained, during its continuance, this affords any proof that such operations would not, under different circumstances, pay a profit on the outlay?

But, moreover, there are some obstructions peculiar to the waste lands themselves. Many, for example, are held in joint ownership. In other cases the boundaries of contiguous estates are undetermined. The cattle of several adjoining properties have a run over the bog or mountain, and no one can make his title good to any particular portion. For half a century past a compulsory partition of these joint properties has been, over and over again, urged upon the Legislature; but nothing has been done. In 1836, the Poor Inquiry Commissioners put this recommendation prominently forward, as one of first necessity for the employment of the poor and the growth of food. The Committee of 1835 had done the same, but with no better results. A few days since I was informed by a considerable landed proprietor, that if he could only obtain an apportionment of his share of a large tract of mountain land, in which he holds a joint interest with several other parties-some absentees, some minors, and therefore incapable of joining him voluntarily he should instantly set to work some hundreds of labourers who are now fed in idleness at the expense of himself and his neighbours. But legislation is necessary for this, and nothing is done to relieve the land from the legal shackles which prohibit its effective use.

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Again, with respect to the bog land, of which nearly three millions of acres are considered reclaimable, it is generally impossible for individual proprietors, still less for their tenants, to reclaim effectually. Arterial drainage on a large scale is indispensable as a commencement, cutting through many properties, deepening river beds, perhaps to considerable distances. Hence, as Lord Cloncurry justly observed, in a recently-published letter, Government alone can set on foot such undertakings, on that comprehensive scale, and with that engineering skill, which is necessary for the purpose of rendering these tracts reclaimable. But the Government is doing nothing, and has never done anything, towards this great national object, although forty years since some £40,000 were spent by a Government Bog Commission in making detailed surveys, plans, and estimates of the cost of the reclamation of all the bogs in Ireland. The Commission made the surveys, reported most strongly in favour of the undertaking, printed at the public expense maps and sections of more than half the bogs, with precise directions for setting about their drainage, a mass of matter of which the mere catalogue and index fills a very bulky folio volume; and from that day to this their report, surveys, and estimates have slumbered in the dust in the archives of Dublin Castle, and the bogs remain still tabooed against the industry of the Irish people, who are in consequence starving for want of food, and idle for want of work. A striking example of the results of the "let alone" principle, on which the objection I am now combating, rests.

But it may be said, the not extend to every estate.

obstructions adverted to canThere ought to be instances