566 Hon. George G. Brodrick [May 6, 



system — the dependent condition of the agricultural labourer. During 

 the Middle Ages, English labourers, whether freemen or serfs, had 

 always been essentially peasants, that is, occupiers of land which they 

 cultivated in spare hours for their own benefit, and from which they 

 could not be displaced, so long as they rendered certain customary 

 services or paid their rent. With the growth of the commercial 

 spirit, the suppression of monasteries, the general rise of prices, and 

 the progress of enclosure, a new era set in, and the poor-law of 

 Elizabeth finally transformed the old English peasant into the modern 

 English agricultural labourer, who lives on weekly wages, never owns 

 land, and seldom holds any beyond a small garden or allotment, look- 

 ing upon the workhouse as his natural refuge in old age. Probably 

 he is better housed and clothed than his mediajval ancestor, though it 

 is doubtful whether he is belter fed, if we take into account the exor- 

 bitant price of meat in these days. But he is certainly less inde- 

 pendent, and, notwithstanding the spread of education, he must still bo 

 ranked below a great part of the continental peasantry — not to speak 

 of American farmers — in the scale of civilisation. 



III. Let us now consider how far these distinctive features of the 

 English land system apply to Ireland. 



1, 2. Of course, the law of succession to land and the practice of 

 family settlements are the same in both countries, though Primogeni- 

 ture was not established in the Celtic parts of Ireland until after the 

 great confiscations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even 

 now, it is not so deeply rooted in Irish as in English po^Dular senti- 

 ment. The yeomen and small proprietors who still survive in some 

 English counties generally " make eldest sons," but Irish tenant- 

 farmers, who have long been wont to deal with their farms as if they 

 were their own, often leave them by will to their widows, and usually 

 make a liberal jjrovision out of them for younger sons and daughters. 



3. But, however this may be, the landowning class, under the 

 operation of Primogeniture and entail, has become even smaller in 

 Ireland than in England — smaller, not only absolutely, but relatively. 

 Speaking broadly, we may say that all Ireland is divided among 

 about 20,000 proprietors, and that by far the greater part is owned by 

 about 10,000 proprietors, of whom most are Protestant and of English 

 descent, while many of the largest are absentees. This contrast be- 

 tween 20,000 or 10,000 owners and more than half a million occu- 

 piers, must never be forgotten in a survey of Irish rural economy. It 

 is of course partly the result of conquest and confiscation — great 

 tracts of land having been allotted to any soldier or adventurer wil- 

 ling to settle in the country. It partly arises also from the want of 

 trade and manufactures in Ireland, which reduces the number of 

 people able and willing to purchase land, for the purpose of improving 

 their social position. But there can be no doubt that it mainly arises 

 from the operation of Primogeniture and entail, keeping the owner- 

 ship of Irish land in the hands of men unconnected with Ireland, 

 many of whom, if free trade in land had been established, would have 



