&l)c jFarmer's iHcmtljIn lltsitov. 



55 



increased depth of ploughing and the use of tin sub- 

 mil plough wherever it can be done without too great 

 cost of team. 



The Social Condition ol England. 

 Under this head, the North American Review 

 for October 1817, presents the most appalling 

 tiic-is in relation to the suffering of masses of the 

 population of the British islands. We have not 

 room for llie entire article ; but make random 

 extracts: 



How comes it, that one half of the whole pop- 

 ulation of Ireland, and perhaps one sixth that of 

 Scotland, have been suffering the cruel pangs of 

 hunger for a t -\ five- month, ami that hundreds of 

 thousands of them during this time have actually 

 ilied of starvation ? The bounty of Providence 



lias not laded; sliip loads of corn have been 

 tinned away from their shores for want of a 

 market. The granaries of the two islands have 

 been filled to overflowing, not indeed front the 

 products of their own harvests, hut from the im- 

 mense supplies poured into them by our ever- 

 teeming land. Flour and meal became a drug 

 in the English market before a sheaf of this 

 year's Wheat was cut, and many dealers in grain 

 were bankrupted by the consequent sudden re- 

 duction of prices. If the stock of provisions in 

 the British isles bad been equally distributed 

 among the people, not a man, woman or child 

 would have suffered from hunger a single hour. 

 The fate of the Irish and Scotch appeals the 

 more terrible, because the;/ hare starred in the midst 

 of plenty. They have died, not because the fields 

 were cursed with barrenness, but because they 

 have not had wherewithal to buy food. * * * 



How is it, we asl< again, that with no difficulty 

 in procuring food, and no lack of wealth or gen- 

 erosity ill the nation at large, this terrible famine 

 has happened ? The answer that must be given 

 is a startling one, but it is so well supported by 

 a cloud of evidence from all quarters, that it 

 would be idle to question its accuracy. It is, that 

 the bulk of the laboring population of Ireland, 

 even in their best estate, — in ordinary years 

 when crops are abundant, and there is no pres- 

 sure or distress in the commercial or manufac- 

 lurim.' world, no stoppage of industry from any 

 unusual cause, — are but one degree removed 

 from starvation. They have nothing to full hack 

 upon : no retrenchment is possible, no greater 

 of privation can he endured. Of course, 

 a iparatively slight cause, an insignificant di- 

 minution of one article of the harvest, a rot in 

 the potato fields, cuts the slender thread which 

 is their sole support, ami millions are ill danger 

 of perishing with hunger. The amount of ab- 

 solute destitution thus produced is great, seem- 

 ingly out of all proportion with the circumstance 

 to which it is immediately to be attributed. This 

 unhappy people may he regarded figuratively as 

 clinging to the sides of an immense precipice, 

 with hut one support, corresponding to t lie small- 

 est quantity of potatoes that can maintain life, to 

 save them from falling into the abyss of starva- 

 tion which yawns beneath. Narrow the ledge 

 on which they stand by the fraction of an 

 inch, and t In- v can no longer retain their foot- 

 hold. • * * * * * * 



Ireland is not the only sufferer; many of the 

 people of Scotland are no better off, and the 

 manufacturing and agricultural poor of England 

 are rapidly sinking to the same level. The mul- 

 titude in this wretched condition increases every 

 day, not only according to the natural growth of 

 population, hut in its proportion to the aggregal ■ 

 of all classes. Children are horn to be as mise- 

 rable as their parents, and individuals are con 

 stantly filling from otie degree of poverty to an- 

 other, till they reach this lowest stage. Propel ty 



lends faster and faster to accumulate in a few 



hands; the gains that are made, and they are 

 enormous, are for these few ; the losses, the des- 

 titution and misery, are for the million. Dispo- 

 sable capital and labor both increase in Great 

 Britain much faster than is needed; the former 

 is sent in vast amounts to foreign countries in 

 search of employment ; the latter is less easily 

 exported, and an immense surplus of it remains 

 at home. 



According to the Irish census of 1811, the 



whole number of families in Ireland is 1,172,787, 

 oi' whom two thirds are chiefly em ployed ill ag- 

 riculture. There are 1,1*26,050 males over fifteen 

 years of age, who are classed as agricultural ser- 

 vants and laborers, forming nearly one half 

 of tie- w hole number of males of this age on the 

 island. Besides these, 306,915 families cultivate 

 farms not exceeding five acres each, many of 

 them iude. d comprising but one acre, and these 

 small fanners, as we shall see, are nearly as 

 wretched as the ordinary day-laborers. Those 

 who hue less than one acre are reckoned as day- 

 laborers. It is obvious that the agricultural pop- 

 ulation is excessive, only 352,0 IG families being 

 chiefly engaged in manufactures and trade. — 

 England has nearly twice as much arable land as 



Ireland ; in the former country only about 7(J0,000 

 families are engaged in the tillage of 25,632,000 

 acres, while in the latter 974,188 families culti- 

 vate 13,838,782 acres. Adding the wives and 

 children of the day-laborers and of those who 

 hire farms not exceeding five acres, we have not 

 less than five millions of persons, or nearly five 

 eighths of the whole population, constituting the 

 class of the agricultural poor. To these must 

 be added at least another million of poor among 

 the civic population, and those in ihe country 

 engaged chiefly in manufacture and trade. These 

 six millions would all be considered, according 

 to the standard anil wages of living in the United 

 Slates, as very poor ; hut as it is estimated by the 

 best authorities, that only one half of the Irish 

 population subsist chiefly or entirely upon pota- 

 toes, the number of those who cannot fall to a 

 lower stage of destitution than that which they 

 occupy at present may be safely stated at four 

 millions. 



The excess of the rural population, in compar- 

 sion with the civic, is one great cause of the 

 wretchedness of the small farmers. Unable to 

 obtain work, the laborers strive to hire land, and 

 their competition, by extravagantly raising the 

 rent, brums the petty fanners nearly to their own 

 level. Rack rent is a new word which Ireland 

 has added to the English language to denote the 

 excessive rent which the land-owner wrests by 

 torture, as it were, from the poor cultivator. Any 

 price that is asked will be given, and to secure 

 the payment of ii, the crops are not permitted to 

 leave the ground until the demands of the land- 

 lord are satisfied. "The rent of conacre laud," 

 says Mr. Thornton, " ranges from £4 to £10 (or 

 from 20 to 50 dollars) an acre." This term is 

 given to the small plots of ground which are 

 hired by agricultural laborers to be planted with 

 potatoes. They are commonly held under one 

 of the larger farmers, the rent being paid some- 

 times in manure and sometimes in labor. For 

 tin- cabin attached a rent of seven or eight dol- 

 lars a year is paid. The system of under-letting 

 is carried to a great extent in Ireland, three or 

 four "middlemen" often intervening at successive 

 stages between the land-owner and the actual 

 cultivator of the soil. The failure of either one 

 of these may cause the single pig, the last re- 

 source of the poor tenant, to be seizerl for rent 

 which he had already paid to his immediate 

 landlord. Occupants of larger farms are obliged 

 to employ laborers at the lowest wages, am! 

 sometimes to defer the work of harvest for a long 

 time from want of money to pay them. The ex- 

 cessive rent which tic fanner pays deprives him 

 of the power of properly manuring his laud, or 

 observing a due rotation of crops, SO that the soil 

 is every year deteriorated, and the fences and 

 buildings fall into decay. Numbers of them 

 every year fail to meet their engagements, and 

 are consequently deprived of their holdings, and 

 sink into the next lower class, the number in 

 which constantly increases as they "o down in 

 the scale, till tiiey reach that in which further 

 degradation is. impossible. 



About two dollars a week are considered in 

 England as the mininum of wages that can sup- 

 port a laborer with his family, and even at this 

 point the hardship which be must endure is ex- 

 cessive, lint the Irish laborers seldom earn 

 more than one dollar a week, and for a large 

 portion of the year cannot find employment even 

 at that price. They Hock in multitudes to the 

 towns, or to England at harvest time, seeking a 

 pittance that may prevent them from being turn- 

 ed away from the cabin and poiato-patch, which 

 alone can shield them from starvation. While 

 they are gone, their wives and children wander 



about the country as beggars, often relieved by 

 those who have nothing but potatoes for them- 

 selves. 



After describing the misery of the mass of peo- 

 ple in several of the counties, the Review pro- 

 ceeds : 



It is in Cotniaught, however, that we find the 

 most striking picture of Irish destitution and 

 misery in the most hopeless and aggravated form. 

 It is the "lower deep" of suffering, which can- 

 not he paralleled in any other district of this af- 

 flicted island. In the county of Mayo, out of 

 about 46,000 farms, 44,000 are under fifteen 

 acres, and are held by men who are obliged to 

 do their own work, being too poor to hire labor- 

 ers. Yet the county swarms with laborers who 

 can seldom get employment one day out of four : 

 there are 57,000 of them in this wretched condi- 

 tion. Most of these hire a potato-patch of the 

 small fanners, or occupy some of the waste 

 ground which they are allowed to hold rent free 

 for a year or two, till they have made it worth 

 paying rent for. When they have planted their 

 potatoes, they set oil' to roam the country, begin- 

 ning lo beg only when a distance from home; — 

 or if they can obtain a few shillings to pay Iheir 

 passage, I hey cross over to England to search for 

 work. If in this way they can get money enough 

 lo pay for the seed which they obtained on 

 credit, and for the rent of the land, they can live 

 during the winter, on the potatoes which they 

 have raised ; otherwise their crop is seized, and 

 they must beg during the winter also. They 

 plant only the " lumper potatoes," which are 

 raised easily and in larger quantities than the 

 other sorts, but are soft, watery and unwhole- 

 some, so that even pigs do not thrive on them. 

 These are often dug while quite small, anil eaten 

 with various weeds and other disgusting food. — 

 In summer, which is always :be period of great- 

 est suffering, men may be seen ly ing in the 

 ditches from weakness, or working on the bog 

 when so enfeebled by hunger that they can hard- 

 ly raise the sods. 



Going still further into detail of Irish suffering 

 the Heview continues: 



The foregoing account, which is a mere a- 

 bridgment of Mr. Thornton's, is founded chiefly 

 on Ihe reports of the Irish Railway and Irish 

 Poor-Law Commissioners. We have now be- 

 fore us, in five immense folios, the evidence ta- 

 ken in every part of the island, with great care 

 and labor, by the Commission of 1844, on the 

 Occupation of Land in Ireland. It is enough to 

 say ol it, that it confirms in every particular the 

 preceding statements, and adds even higher co- 

 loring to the awful picture of national wretched- 

 ness. We can give but one extract ; it is from 

 the testimony given before the Commission by 

 Daniel Griffin, a physician and surgeon of the 

 city of Limerick, who had made it his business 

 for years to inquire into the condition of the low- 

 er classes. During a tew days preceding his ex- 

 amination, he collected his evidence by making 

 minute inquiries of a few families, "taken quite 

 indiscriminately." The following, with some 

 abridgement, is his account of the result: 



" The families were 44 in number, consisting 

 of 245 persons. In these there were (32 persons 

 capable of work, will) 183 persons depending on 

 them : of these last 45 were sick or infirm. I 

 could ascertain with certainty the earnings of 

 only 35 of these families, and in these there were 

 54 persons capable of working, each of whom 

 upon an average earned £5 or £6 within the past 

 year, being from £7 to£S for each family, which 

 would be equivalent lo about seven months em- 

 ployment to each working person, at 7id. [15 cts.] 

 a day. With regard to their food, 1 found that 11 

 of these families seemed to live rather comforta- 

 bly in comparison with the rest, having milk usu- 

 ally with their potatoes, and meat occasionally : 

 ihe remaining 33 families lived upon the lowest 

 description of food, such as white potatoes and 

 salt or herrings, and sometimes, but rarely, a lit- 

 tle sour milk. Of ibis last number, 18 families 

 were frequently unable lo procure any food, 

 sometimes fasting for a long period, and living 

 for a length of time on one meal a day. One 

 person, James Boyle, with a wife and two child- 

 ren, states that they lived on potatoes and salt; 

 the family usually go without breakfast. The 

 next, Michael M'Nnrama, wife and four children, 



