IRELAND AND HER COMMENTATORS. 619 



absurd to imagine that Ireland could supply the wants of her gentry 

 in luxuries, as well or as cheaply as England ; and the facilities of 

 steam navigation bringing the two countries, as it were together, a 

 living profit is not to be made in the second market, if competition be 

 not very moderate indeed. If the drain of capital from Ireland oc- 

 casioned by absenteeism were not altogether imaginary, such a thing 

 as money would long since have ceased to exist in that country. 

 But the fact is, that she could not take five millions worth of English 

 manufactures as she does annually, if England did not pay her rents 

 by taking the same amount in provisions. It is not to the advantage 

 of any country to supply all its own wants. It is better for England 

 to procure Irish corn in exchange for hardware and cloths, than to 

 grow so much corn additionally even if she could and vice versa for 

 Ireland. It is certainly an apparent anomaly, that Ireland should 

 send away provisions for the want of which her people are in a great 

 measure actually starving. But absenteeism has nothing to do with 

 that. Mr. Inglis gives abundant evidence that the absentee land- 

 holders possess as well managed estates, and as comfortable tenantry 

 as the resident proprietors. Mr. Stanley in his work already quoted, 

 furnishes testimony of the impossibility of the most zealous and phi- 

 lanthropic residents effecting any improvement in the peasantry on 

 the lands of their tenants. The few individuals immediately about 

 the person of the landlord, who benefit by the reduction of rents or 

 pecuniary assistance, cannot be deemed an exception. If proprietors 

 were to farm all their own estates, things would not be thereby im- 

 proved, as the amount of labour necessary for their cultivation would 

 be less than when divided among many small proprietors. Most of 

 the large landlords hold more than one estate. A landlord in Kerry 

 holds an estate in Antrim he cannot be on both j so the residence of 

 such owners in Ireland would no more answer the ends of the cla- 

 mourers for a domesticated nobility, than would their residence in 

 London. Had there been fewer resident nobility, political broils 

 would have been proportionately few. Need we point to the doings 

 every day recorded of noble marquises, earls, and right honourables in 

 the counties they do visit ? Meetings for the promotion of religious 

 rancour and the perpetuation of the bitterest civil strife ; the repres- 

 sion of industry, the renewal of outrage, the strengthening of cor- 

 ruption, and the increase of misery are the results of the residence of 

 proprietors in more instances than it is necessary to record. Who 

 threw the burdens of tithes almost exclusively and out of all propor- 

 tion to their means of bearing them on the poor ? To whom are to 

 be attributed the vices of grand jury and corporation influence; and 

 to whom the iniquitous pasture and leasing systems, but to the resi- 

 dent proprietors ? 



But granting that the demands of the demagogues for a resident 

 nobility were complied with, would landholders be the less forgetful 

 of individual aggrandizement than they are now ? Decidedly not. 

 It is said, that if landlords were to reside on their own estates, they 

 would be enabled to judge for themselves ; but landlords in any case 

 will always be more ready to place confidence in the representations 

 of their agents, than in the assertions of their tenantry. If Ireland 



