UO FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. 



It will be for the wisdom of Parliament to determine, 

 whether, bj removing its causes, they can prevent the 

 renewal of a system which has been so fatally inter- 

 woven with the social condition of the West of Ireland. 

 Confidence in the potato is now completely shaken among 

 the labouring classes, and perhaps a better time may 

 never arrive for encouraging a resort to money -wages. 



It is equally important to guard against a recurrence 

 of encumbered estates, and the disabilities of landlords. 

 The country has learned a bitter lesson on this point ; 

 and the state of Ireland demands that we should not 

 perpetuate a system which locks up the land for family 

 advantages against the just claims of a creditor, and to 

 the general injury of the community. Much good will 

 be done by the Encumbered Estates Act. But the 

 further simplification of the sale, and the removal of all 

 undue impediments to the transfer, of land, are matters 

 of paramount importance. 



It has been already shown, by an extract from the 

 Seventeenth Report of the Board of Public Works, that 

 no change to a better system of husbandry can be ex- 

 pected from a pauper tenantry. It will ever be the duty 

 of a wise Government to remove all burdens which press 

 with actual severity on the cultivator of the soil. It is 

 of the utmost importance that the means by which the 

 annual produce is got from the land should be left 

 unfettered. Whatever interferes with this tends to 

 diminish that produce, and simultaneously to increase 

 the demand upon the surplus, by throwing labourers out 

 of employment. Rent is the surplus after all the 

 expenses of cultivation, including a return for the 



