AND IN 1849. 129 



the same system and no redress to be found. Such 

 being the case, the farmers are enabled to charge the 

 price of labour as low as they please, and rate the land 

 as high as they like. Owing to this, the poor are 

 depressed : they live upon potatoes and sour milk, and 

 the poorest of them only salt and water to them, with 

 now and then a herring. Their milk is bought ; for 

 very few keep cows ; scarce any pigs ; but a few poultry. 

 Their circumstances are incomparably worse than they 

 were twenty years ago ; for then they had all cows." 

 (Part I. 125.) 



Seventy years have passed away, and the cottars of 

 Kerry are in a worse condition now than they appear 

 to have been even then. Those of Limerick, Clare, and 

 Tipperary, as described in the two first extracts, are 

 forgotten ; their descendants, instead of showing any con- 

 tinuance of that " rising national prosperity" mentioned 

 by Young, have fallen into a state of the utmost wretched- 

 ness. Their mud hovels are worse ; their wages nomi- 

 nally a little more : but as wages are usually paid by 

 con-acre, and as con-acre rent has increased in a still 

 greater degree, the condition of the cottar is really 

 much worse than in 1779. This is, of course, without 

 considering the failure of the potatoes ; for that has 

 completed their ruin. 



The following figures place the matter clearly before 

 us : — 



1779. 1849. 



Labourer's wages, .... 5d. to 8d. 6d.tol0d. 



Con-acre rent of potato groifhd per acre, 65s. to 120s. 120s. to 200s. 



The rise in wages has been from a fifth to a sixth, 

 that of con-acre rent about a half to a third. The 



