194 PRACTICABILITY OF IMPROVING IRELAND. 



But, however anomalous this may appear, it can be fully accounted 

 for. I believe the only persons in Ireland, generally speaking, with 

 a capital, will be found to be the poor, not the gentry. The poor 

 with their capital are without influence ; the gentry with their influ- 

 ence are without capital. It is true the poor have no money, but 

 they possess an equally, nay, even a more efficient capital, in 

 their labour; and this capital the Irish peasantry are accustomed to 

 expend upon the soil with a prodigality unexampled, when it is un- 

 derstood that they only are to reap the advantage ; and that they 

 must starve unless they compel the land to produce them food. 



The Irish peasant will do more than any other person, under like 

 circumstances and privations; and he will accomplish by his labour 

 what the proprietor cannot undertake ; because the proprietor has no 

 capital of any description, and therefore he is obliged to suffer his 

 bogs to lie waste : such a proprietor acquires an indolence and a 

 listlessness, the offsprings of poverty. He has neither heart nor prac- 

 tice to enable him to set the improvements in motion by means of 

 the labour and capital of the peasant. For to effect this requires 

 more knowledge and exertion than such proprietors possess. 



The levels or falls, we know, must be in the power of the improver. 

 The obstinacy and perverseness of a single intermediate proprietor, 

 if not prevented, would mar the entire process. Family incumbran- 

 ces and family settlements must be compromised, and a legislative 

 enactment obtained. All these are too much and too formidable for 

 an unpracticed and impoverished squire to overcome; and so, from 

 generation to generation, proprietors have no prospect except their 

 dreary wastes. 



It is, therefore, quite obvious that individuals in Ireland can- 

 not undertake the improvement of extensive bog wastes or rivers. 

 Partial improvements have been made, where circumstances have 

 permitted, with encouraging success. 



I will mention one, which shows what a litttle money-capital can 

 effect in that unknown country, less known than the Ovahs of Ma- 

 dagascar. 



The Marquess of Hertford had a bog, containing about 1356 En- 

 glish acres, reclaimed ; it was accomplished for the sum of 2,546, 

 and produced an addition of 500 to his immense rental of 40,000 

 per annum, in the Co. Antrim : i. e. for an outlay of l. 17s. 7d. per 

 English acre, he derived about seven shillings per acre permanent 

 rent, from that which had, until then, been totally unproductive. 

 Thus he obtained for about five years pvrchast, what was itomedi- 



