CAUSES OF DISTRESS REMEDIAL AGENCIES. 551 



through their own improvidence, or through the mal-practices of 

 overseers, vestries, and magistrates. Any man, however, who has 

 attended to the domestic condition of our labouring poor, knows 

 that such is not the fact. Even granting that it were so, still time 

 must be given for a return to a more healthy industrial con- 

 dition ; and it is worse than folly to imagine that any great 

 social change can be operated at the fiat of an Act of Par- 

 liament. 



Another remedial agent which has been advocated by more than 

 one man of understanding and benevolence, is the cultivation of 

 " waste lands." According to a very able report drawn up by Mr. 

 Cowling, it would appear that there are 15,000,000 acres of waste 

 land, capable of improvement, in Great Britain and Ireland, and 

 somewhere about 16,000,000 acres incapable of being turned to pro- 

 fitable account. There can be little doubt, however, that this quan- 

 tity of waste land is rather founded upon conjectural data, than upon 

 actual survey. Admitting this, there can be no question but that 

 there are many millions of acres of uncultivated soil, which would, 

 under a proper system of tillage, yield a more than equal return for 

 any outlay expended upon it. But this return would not be imme- 

 diate; and many of the most extensive tracts are so far removed 

 from available markets, for the sale of their produce, that there is 

 little room to hope for their being called into useful cultivation. No 

 capitalist will embark money upon the speculation of reclaiming 

 waste; for, as Mr. Cowling very justly remarks, "such an enter- 

 prise would undoubtedly be attended with considerable loss, in the first 

 instance ; but," he continues, " you have a surplus of labourers, whose 

 maintenance imposes upon the poor-rates a burden of 2,000,000 

 per annum : if you employ these labourers on the improvement of 

 your wastes, you will be losers to the amount of one million per 

 annum by the undertaking : but as the poor-rates will be lessened 

 two millions in amount, the public will be a gainer of one million by 

 the undertaking." In an able work, from which we have already 

 quoted, are the following remarks on Waste Lands and their cultiva- 

 tion : " It is argued that waste lands remain uncultivated because 

 they are barren because their cultivation, would not yield an adequate 

 return for the outlay required for their tillage. We cannot accede 

 to this opinion we contend, on the contrary, that each division of 



