106 IMPROVEMENT OF 



bourers accused as lazy, and even unable to 

 work,, but to us the want of industry on the 

 part of the servant was the clearest evidence 

 of a greater want on the part of the master. 



We have always been accustomed to consider 

 it a duty incumbent upon us, not only to teach 

 our servants, when working by the piece or on 

 taskwork, how to perform a quantity of work 

 for their own sakes as quality for ours, but 

 also to see that they had a sufficiency of whole- 

 some food such as would enable them to do so, 

 convinced that this was no more social duty 

 than wise policy. It is a well-established fact, 

 and one experienced by every labouring man, 

 that that muscular strength which is so abso- 

 lutely necessary for him to possess, can only be 

 acquired by a combination of hard labour and 

 proper feeding ; and that the two are insepa- 

 rably connected together. Hence, also, the 

 physical improvement of the labouring popu- 

 lation of Ireland, as the amelioration of their 

 domestic circumstances, must ever be insepa- 

 rably connected with the agricultural improve- 

 ment of her provinces as already noticed ; but 

 the former must have precedence of the latter as 

 cause has precedence of effect. What fanner 



