THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



183 



AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT IN IRELAND. 



For this year at least, in England, if not in Ire- 

 land, we appear likely to be in a great measure exempt 

 from the ravages of the potato-blight. 



It is now more than ten years since this mysterious 

 visitant made its first appearance, and mighty are the 

 social changes which have followed in its train. It 

 caused Peel, as his posthumous Memoirs testify, to 

 abrogate the corn laws, which, but for this mysterious 

 little fungus, scarcely visible to the naked eye, he 

 would probably have maintained some years longer, 

 in spite of Cobden and the League. It led the way 

 to the Encumbered Estates Court in Ireland, and it 

 taught the peasantry of that country to solve the 

 great problem of a self-supporting system of emigra- 

 tion. It thinned the redundant population of Ireland, 

 and has added millions of emigrants to replenish and 

 subdue the forests and the prairies of America and 

 Australia. No one who knew Ireland before the 

 potato-blight, and has visited it lately, can fail to be 

 struck by the improvement which has taken place 

 through the agency of this scarcely visible destroyer. 

 It has occasioned fearful suffering, but it has produced 

 much good. The evils of Treland have been attributed 

 to many causes. We agree with those who trace them 

 to the use of the potato as the exclusive food of the 

 mass of the population. We put out of consideration 

 the minor evils which arise from entire de|/endence on 

 an article of food which must all be consumed within 

 the year, and does not, from its nature, permit the 

 surplus produce of one year to be stored in order to 

 supply the deficiency of another. The great, the crying, 

 evil of the potat > system was the ease with which it 

 supplied the Irish peasant with subsis^tence, and the 

 low rate of wages which it engendered. The potato was 

 to him what their fine climate is to the inhabitants of 

 tropical regions. It supplied his wants with too little 

 labour. The ambition of the Irish peasant was bounded 

 by a mud cabin, " convanient," as he phrased it, to a 

 bog. The labour of a few months supplied him with 

 food and fuel. His friend and companion the pig ate 

 out of the same bowl with him, and paid his rent. 

 The sale of a little poultry and butter furnished him 

 with " tobacco and other necessaries," as described in 

 a letter which during the famine year we saw from a 

 wretched cottier. Among these necessaries clothing 

 scarcely appeared to be considered one, with the ex- 

 ception of the long great coat coming down to the 

 heels, in which we have seen the peasantry of those 

 days actually mowing. Whiskey grew, if not on the 

 estate, at least somewhere " convanient" to it, and he 

 knew where. Having cut his turf and dug his potatoes, 

 the Irish cotter had nothing to do, during the remainder 

 of the year, but to drink, dance, and talk politics. 



Now all is changed. The redundant population has 

 disappeared. They were redundant only because un- 

 employed. They were unemployed because there was 



nothing on which they could employ themselves but 

 the cultivation, as by courtesy it was called, of the 

 land. Yet, to that land they clung. They would 

 neither more than half-cultivate it themselves, nor 

 allow others to cultivate it better. The failure of 

 the potato broke up the system. No one who has 

 visited Ireland of late, and knew it before, can fail to 

 be struck with the improvement of the last ten years. 

 He sees improvement in the breeds of sheep, cattle, and 

 pigs; in the habitations of the peasantry, in their dress, 

 and in their air. There is less, much less, of that loung- 

 ing and sauntering which used to strike the traveller as 

 he entered every village and passed every cabin. There 

 is more employment and more steady industry. Whe- 

 ther the benefits of the change might have been gained 

 without so much suffering as accompanied it, is a ques- 

 tion on which we will not enter. There were those 

 who saw, very early in the history of the potato blight, 

 that emigration, and emigration on a large scale, was 

 the only remedy. There were those who, like Sir 

 Francis Burdett, urged it as the remedy long before 

 the potato blight made its appearance. There are 

 some who think that if part of the millions which were 

 wasted on useless relief works, or other palliatives, 

 had been applied to assist emigration, much suffering 

 might have been prevented. We had long held that 

 opinion, and urged it on the resident landowners 

 who were paralyzed by the calamity. It was urged, 

 we have reason to believe, on the Government; but 

 they turned a deaf ear to it. Perhaps they were 

 right. We see now, even when the flight of the pea- 

 santry is voluntary, the lamentations which in some 

 quarters are raised against the depopulation of the 

 country. From how many quarters do we hear com- 

 plaints of the advance of wages and the scarcity of 

 labourers ! All this would have been laid to the 

 charge of the Government, if they had aided and en- 

 couraged emigration ; and therefore, though they 

 might have saved much misery by doing so, it is per- 

 haps better that they did not. Want of capital has 

 often been urged as the great want of Ireland. The 

 proceedings of the Encumbered Estates Court have 

 proved that not to be the case. Of all the millions of 

 acres which have passed through that court, fully two- 

 thirds have been purchased witli Irish capital. 



At the same time we believe it to be undeniable that 

 most of the Scottish and English farmers who have 

 purchased lands in Ireland for the purpose of occupa- 

 tion have done well, and that, when they have acted 

 with prudence and firmness, they have not been un- 

 welcome settlers among the peasantry. Meanwhile 

 the increase of marriages, which recent returns exhibit, 

 prove that there need be no apprehension of a dearth of 

 population in Ireland. On the other hand, the tide of 

 emigration still flows from Ireland, and draws 

 forth unnecessary lamentations in some quarters. 



