IRELAND— ITS SOCIAL STATE. 153 



industry. They are not an industrious people. Hard 

 work, however gainful, is disliked. They will work 

 hard by fits and starts ; but the steady backbone is 

 not there. There is nothing to hinder any man from 

 reaping the fruit of his industry. Many do so. 

 Things are not now as they were before the famine, 

 when, if a tenant lost his bit of land, there was little 

 for him to faU. back on. Labour is now well paid, 

 whilst there is every facility for earning still higher 

 wages in England and America. The man who clings 

 to a wretched bit of land in Ireland, that is unable to 

 support him and his, is just a pauper, and must be so 

 for ever if he stays. 



What Mr. Eobert Chambers, with Scotch canni- 

 ness, calls the "peasant proprietor craze" needs 

 qualities that are very rare in Ireland — great industry, 

 skill, and self-exertion. 



Instead of being a sort which the State should 

 strive to root in the soU, the State (if it is to do 

 anything) should put paupers like these somewhere 

 where they can earn a better living, and the children 

 can grow up in comfort and decency, different from 

 the state of their parents. Such paupers are useful 

 to agitators, and to no one else. They form, in fact, 

 the agitator's stock-in-trade, and the agitators accord- 

 ingly do their best to preserve them. The more that 

 is done for them by the State, or any one else, the 

 worse they will be. They are in the position of a 

 protected interest under the very worst circum- 



