CH.VII.] ABLE-BODIED PERSONS OUT OF WORK. 205 



Agriculture was therefore intended to furnish an 

 uninterrupted succession of employment ; and if 

 human laws were in accordance with the laws of 

 Providence, they would not have permitted the 

 cultivation of farms of less than three hundred 

 acres, because that is the least extent which can 

 yield, by the various kinds of cultivation, a suc- 

 cession of labour throughout the year, and thus 

 ensure the existence of the families which are 

 settled upon it. 



But by permitting divisions of the soil into fifty, 

 ten, five, and even a single acre, the land admits of 

 only one species of cultivation, and consequently 

 only a single period of labour. The existence of 

 the country is therefore become as precarious as 

 the harvest. 



Much more care and prudence ought to be exer- 

 cised in legislating for the country than for the 

 towns. In the country there are neither hospitals, 

 asylums, prisons, barracks, military, nor stores of 

 provisions, as in towns. Society is there defence- 

 less against the numerous famished and irritated 

 population, who assemble moreover periodically at 

 the fairs., where all those plans of nightly attacks, 

 fires and ravages are formed, of which Ireland has 

 been the theatre for two centuries. 



