PREFACE. 



IT would be difficult to overrate the importance to Ireland 

 of having its land valuations properly executed. The island 

 contains in all 20,808,271 statute acres, and the whole of 

 this, with the exception of 650,000 acres, now covered 

 with water, or occupied as towns, is in the hand of the 

 farming population subjected to the operations of tillage, 

 or occupied as pasture. 



The population directly employed in agriculture was, by 

 the Census of 1841, 5,406,743: add to this, the landed 

 proprietors, and their staff of dependents ; the merchants 

 trading in agricultural produce ; the tradesmen employed 

 throughout the countrv as smiths, carpenters, &c. ; and 

 the^ total number of individuals then actually dependent on 

 land for their support, was not less than six millions. If the 

 Census of 1851 reduce this number by nearly two millions, 

 still the land remains; and the population yet lingering 

 upon it is very large, any individual of which may be said 

 to be personally interested in the work of land valuation. 



That no treatise on Land Valuation in Ireland should 

 have ever been published for general circulation, seems 

 strange, considering the great importance of the subject ; 

 but the want of one was formerly less felt than at present, 

 because excessive competition for land generally secured to 

 landlords the full value of the soil. Many circumstances, 

 however, at present combine to awaken attention to the 

 subject : the potato blight of 1846 ; the abolition of pro- 



