124 OBSTACLES TO SALE OF ESTATES. 



inducement, a man will not leave this country, with all 

 its conveniences and luxuries, the society he has been 

 accustomed to, the well-ordered people among whom he 

 has hitherto dwelt, — to exchange these for a residence 

 in the West of Ireland, where, for some years to come, 

 there must of necessity be much misery to be witnessed 

 and encountered. He will look to the causes which 

 produced an unsound, and, in many cases, too high 

 rental, and to the possibility that the burden of grand- 

 jury cess may be laid hereafter on the right shoulders — 

 those of the landlord instead of the tenant. And when 

 all these things are taken into account, a purchaser still 

 has before him one thing which, if not settled by the 

 interposition of Government, will render the Encumbered 

 Estates Bill a dead letter, in so far as regards the dis- 

 tressed districts of the West of Ireland, and that is — 



THE INDEFINITE INCREASE OF RATES. 



Until a limit shall be placed, beyond which individual 

 property cannot be made responsible for the whole 

 poverty of a union, there can be no improvement, and 

 no hope of new men, with capital, venturing it in a specu- 

 lation, the result of which is placed altogether beyond 

 their control. The consideration of this leads me into 

 a large question, which I will merely attempt to touch 

 upon. 



In passing through the western counties of Ireland, it 

 may not strike the stranger that there is any apparent 

 redundancy of population. The numerous habitations 

 are generally in bye-roads, huddled together ; or on the 

 margins of bogs ; or walled in on the summit of a bar- 

 ren rock, (as I saw one case in the county of Limerick,) 



