356 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



these occasions, they were unable to pay their rent, the 

 landlord ordered them to be ejected, which was not very 

 easily done. Being only tenants at will, nothing remained 

 for it but an armed resistance. The agent charged to 

 levy the rent, and the police who came to enforce the 

 ejectment, were received with a discharge of fire-arms ; 

 and when such outrages were followed up by indictments, 

 witnesses could not be found to support the accusations, 

 nor juries to find the prisoners guilty. The dispossessed 

 tenants, having no means of subsistence, became thieves, 

 their wives and children turned beggars, and, as there 

 was no poor's tax a dangerous remedy no doubt, but 

 sometimes necessary there was no limit to the exten- 

 sion of this misery and crime. The most fertile districts 

 suffered severely from these troubles ; the evil reached 

 it^s climax in the worst parts of the island, namely, the 

 west. 



The population of Connaught had reached nearly two 

 for every five acres, or equal to our rich Normandy 

 departments ; and the nature of the soil afforded but 

 an insufficient resource for the sustenance of such a 

 population, half the land, or two out of four millions of 

 acres, being incapable of cultivation. The neighbouring 

 counties of Donegal and Kerry were still worse off ; one- 

 third only of their area consisted of arable land, the rest 

 being either mountains or lakes. Suppose the population 

 of the departments of La Manche, Somme, or Calvados, 

 transported to the Higher or Lower Alps, and consider 

 what would be the consequence ! These counties having 

 neither busy manufactures nor populous towns, the entire 

 population lived by agriculture if that could be called 

 agriculture which was but the short-sighted and hungry 

 exhaustion of the productive powers of the soil. Is it 

 surprising that it became impossible to collect even the 



