" If the present Corn Bill is continued," he says, 

 " Ireland has the power, and will reduce not only 

 the rents, but the price of the produce of this 

 country ; for there is no reason why a country pos- 

 sessing a large tract of land, into which a spade or 

 a plough has never been put, with labourers who 

 subsist on Id. or l^d. a day, cannot grow corn as 

 cheap as either France or Holland.*" Indeed 

 there is little doubt that if the land now in culti- 

 vation, in the United Kingdom, were generally 

 well cultivated, it would yield such an increase as 

 would supply the wants of the present population, 

 independent of those extensive reserves into which 

 neither " plough nor spade" have entered. And 

 if it were in good condition, every intelligent prac- 

 tical man knows, that the quantity of produce 

 would be much more independent of seasons ; that 

 the produce of land in good condition varies com- 

 paratively little. If the season be very favourable 

 for a bulky crop, on such land, a bulky crop 

 generally falls, and does not produce more grain 

 than a good crop which stands up well, though it 

 be not so bulky, and such a crop, in spite of almost 

 any season, may be obtained from land in good 

 condition. I recollect that it was a remark of an 



* " The great bulk of persons in Ireland who till the land, 

 live upon potatoes, the average price may be stated at 2rf. to 

 4rf. the stone of 14lbs ; a labouring man can hardly eat more 

 than half a stone of potatoes a day ; the cost of his labour, 

 therefore, is a miserably low sum, not more than a Id. or l\d. 

 a day." 



