128 CONDITION OF LABOURERS IN 1779, 



To complete the picture, it will be necessary to 

 examine the condition of the labourer in 1779 and 

 1849. 



" A cottar/' says Young, "with a middling family, 

 will have two cows : there is not one without a cow. 

 All of them keep as many pigs as they can rear, and 

 some poultry. Their circumstances are rather better 

 than twenty years ago. Their acre of garden feeds them 

 the year through : nine months on potatoes, and the 

 other three on oaten bread from their own oats. The 

 consumption of potatoes not increased in twenty years. 

 A family of five persons will eat and waste forty -two 

 stone of potatoes in a week. They are not addicted in 

 any remarkable degree to thieving." (Part I.) " I have 

 been in a multitude of cabins that had much useful 

 furniture, and some even superfluous ; chairs, tables, 

 boxes, chests of drawers, earthenware, and, in short, most 

 of the articles found in a middling English cottage ; 

 but, upon inquiry, I very generally found that these 

 acquisitions were all made within the last ten years, 

 a sure sign of a rising national prosperity." (Part II. 

 page 36.) In the county of Kerry, however, the state 

 of the poor is represented-as " exceedingly miserable, 

 owing to the conduct of men of property, who are apt to 

 lay the blame on what they call land-pirates, or 

 men who offer the highest rent, and who, in order to 

 pay this rent, must and do relet all the cabin-lands at 

 an extravagant rise, which is assigning over all the 

 cabins to be devoured by one farmer. The cottars on 

 a farm cannot go from one to another in order to find 

 a good master, as in England ; for all the country is in 



