NECESSITY FOR A COMPREHENSIVE SCHEME. 147 



may be possible to operate on such a scale as shall absorb 

 the greater proportion of the labourers ; and it is con- 

 ceivable that this might continue till the whole arable 

 land was so improved as to be capable of affording 

 regular employment to the entire agricultural popu- 

 lation. 



This assumes that that population does not at the 

 same time increase in an equal ratio. "A tendency 

 to increase can exist only with a power to spread ; 

 when the power to spread ceases, there begins a ten- 

 dency to decay." * The discontinuance of con-acre, and 

 the payment of wages in cash, will unquestionably assist 

 in directly producing this result; while, indirectly, the 

 circulation of money will encourage many of the people 

 to become bakers, butchers, shopkeepers, tailors, shoe- 

 makers, carpenters, &c, and thus tend, in the course of 

 time, materially to alter the proportion of the population 

 entirely dependent on agricultural employment, f 



It also assumes an amount of capital at once expended 

 in the permanent improvement and cultivation of the 

 soil, (landlord and tenant's capital,) such as has been 

 effected by the slow but steady progress of years of labo- 

 rious accumulation in this country. Under the most 

 favourable circumstances, it will be a work of time also in 

 Ireland, and consequently a large proportion of the popu- 

 lation of Connaught must in the mean time be sup- 

 ported from other sources. 



* Mr Hickson on " Laws of Population," in Westminster Review, for Octo- 

 ber 1849. 



+ This process has been going steadily on in Great Britain, where the 

 proportion dependent on agriculture in 1811 was 35 per cent, and in 1841 

 was only 25. 



