206 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



authorities we liavc. He will find Belgium contrasted 

 with Ireland in this respect, and the result estab- 

 lished that small owners of land work harder and live 

 harder than any other class in Europe. Again, in M. de 

 Molinari's first letter to the D^bats, September 22, is 

 this statement: — "Examples in support of this system 

 are not wanting. Men please themselves by citing 

 especially that of the peasant proprietor of France 

 and Belgium, only they forget to add that the small 

 proprietorship of France and Belgium was created by 

 the work of ages, and that the peasants began by 

 acquiring the qualities of order and economy that are 

 indispensable for the good carrying on of proprietor- 

 ship before they became proprietors. They worked 

 and saved penny by penny the capital which they 

 have employed in the acquisition, and later in 

 the increase, of their small domains. Nothing of the 

 sort is required of the Irish tenants ; it is proposed 

 to suppress the apprenticeship of landowning in their 

 favour, and the worst result wiU be to consolidate 

 in Ireland agrarian pauperism." 



He goes on in a very striking passage, too long 

 for quotation, to show the similarity between the 

 small Irish farmer and hand -spinners and hand- 

 loom -weavers in England and elsewhere, and adds 

 that such farmers will be at last only more miser- 

 ably overwhelmed in the ruin of the false system to 

 which their unwise friends are trying to attach them. 

 All these letters, as giving the opinion of a wholly 



