136 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part L 



indicate the poverty of the country. The dress of the people is so wretched, that, to 

 a person who has not visited the country, it is almost inconceivable. The Irish poor, 

 indeed, have no conception of the comforts of life ; and, if they felt their full value, they 

 could not afford them, for though necessaries are cheap, conveniences of all sorts are very 

 dear. 



843. But while the Irish poor are in general destitute of all the accommodations, they 

 hardly ever, except in years of extraordinary distress, know what it is to want the absolute 

 necessaries, of life. The unsparing meal of potatoes, at which the beggar, the pig, the 

 dog, the poultry, and the children seem equally welcome, seldom fails the Irish 

 labourer. 



844. Hence the laziness of the lower Irish. Limited as their wants are to the mere sup- 

 port of animal life, they do not engage in labour with that persevering industry which 

 artificial desires inspire ; and the mode in which they are often paid, that is, giving 

 them a piece of potato land by the year, at once furnishes the means of subsistence, and 

 takes away every stimulus to farther exertion. The farm -servants of the English or 

 Scotch farmers, who carry on agriculture upon the improved system, are constantly em- 

 ployed in some species of labour ; but, after the potatoes of the Irish cottier are planted, 

 tliere is hardly any thing to be done about his little croft till the season of digging ar- 

 rives. During a great portion of the year he is doomed to idleness, and the habits he 

 acquires during the long periods of almost total inaction, are too strong to be overcome 

 when he is transferred to a more regular occupation. Such is the condition of the 

 labouring classes. 



845. Ireland exhibits an assemblage of the jnost contradictory circumstances. It is a 

 country in which, under the most distressing circumstances, population has advanced 

 with the most rapid pace, in which cultivation has advanced without wealth, and education 

 without diffusing knowledge ; where the peasantry are more depressed, and yet can ob- 

 tain subsistence with greater facility, than in any other country of Europe. Their 

 miserable condition will not appear surprising, when the numerous oppressions to which 

 they are subject are taken into consideration. 



846. In the foremost rank of their many grievances, the general prevalence of middle- 

 men must be placed. It is difficult to estimate the extent of the misery which the system 

 of letting and subletting land has brought upon the Irish cultivators. Middlemen have, 

 in every countiy, been the inseparable attendants of absent proprietors : and in such a 

 country as Ireland, where there are numbers of disaffected persons in every quarter, the 

 vigilant eye of a superior inspector is more particularly required. 



847. The system of under-letting lands often proves a great evil in Ireland. By the law 

 of England, the landlord is entitled to distrain for payment of rent, not only the stock 

 which belongs to his immediate tenant, but the crop or stock of a subtenant ; on the 

 principle that whatever grows on the soil ought to be a security to the landlord for his rent : 

 and in Scotland the same rule holds where the landlord has not authorised the subtack ; 

 but if he has, the subtenant is free when he has paid to the principal tenapt. There is 

 little hardship in such a rule in England, where the practice of subletting is, generally 

 speaking, rare ; but when applied to Ireland, where middlemen are universal, it becomes 

 the source of infinite injustice ; for the cultivator being liable to have his crop and stock 

 distrained on account of the tenant from whom he holds, and there being often many 

 tenants interposed between him and the landlord, he is thus perpetually liable to be dis- 

 trained for arrears not his own. The tenant, in a word, can never be secure, though he has 

 faithfully paid his rent to his immediate superior ; because he is still liable to have every 

 thing which he has in the world swept off by an execution for arrears due by any of the 

 many leaseholders, who may be interposed between him and the landlord. It is obvious 

 that such a system must prevent the growth of agricultural capital : this, joined to the 

 exactions of the middlemen, has been the true cause of the universal prevalence of the 

 cottage system, and the minute subdivision of farms. 



848. The tithes in Ireland have long been collected with a severity of which hardly 

 any European state furnishes an example. This has arisen from the wealth and influence 

 of the clergy, joined to the destitute situation of their parishioners. They fall, by the 

 law of that country, only on the tillage land ; the greater part of wliich is held by cottier 

 tenants ; and thus the rich are exempted from bearing their share of the burden. 



849. Another grievance, though not so extensive, is the fine imposed upon a township, for 

 having had the misfortune to have a seizure for illicit distillation made within its bounds. 



850. These evils have been attended with the usual depressirig ejects of oppression. They 

 have prevented the growth of any artificial wants, or any desire of bettering tlieir con- 

 dition, among the mass of the people. Despised by their superiors, and oppressed by all 

 to whom they might naturally have looked for protection, the Irish have felt only the 

 natural instincts of their being. Among the Presbyterians of the north, and the pea- 

 santry in the vicinity of manufacturing towns, who are to a certain extent educated, 

 higher notions of comfort may have imposed some restraint on the principle of popu- 

 lation J but the humiliated poor of other parts, enjoying no respectability or consideration 



