SECT. I.] RESULTS OF THE INQUIRY. 221 



REMARKS. 



The Commissioners, in this first section of their 

 Report to the King, have established the only fact 

 by which we can judge of the wealth or the poverty 

 of an empire, namely, the number of the agricul- 

 turists compared with that of the other classes of 

 society. There is no doubt, as has been well ob- 

 served by those among the Irish witnesses who 

 have travelled, that Ireland is the poorest country 

 in Europe, and Great Britain the richest. This 

 comparison, therefore, presents the two ends of 

 the chain : no one of the states of Europe is so 

 poor as Ireland, or so rich as Great Britain. But 

 since society is never stationary, and experiences 

 continually either a progressive or a retrograde 

 movement, we believe that, in this self-styled age of 

 enlightenment, France and the North of Germany 

 approach near to the state of Ireland, and recede 

 from that of Great Britain. This first picture, then, 

 requires the reader's particular attention, for it 

 shows the basis of the whole construction of so- 

 ciety. 



In 1831, Ireland had 884,339 families of agri- 

 culturists, who, besides providing for themselves, 

 found food for 500,727 families not employed in 

 agriculture. Great Britain had 961,134 families, 

 who, after providing for themselves, gave sub- 



