388 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



is the reason why only an eighth of the properties sold 

 have been purchased by other than Irishmen ; and for the 

 most part these acquisitions have been forced on the 

 purchasers, who, being creditors, have found no better 

 way of getting back their money. Martin's Estate is a 

 case in point. It has passed into the possession of a Life 

 Assurance Company, who were mortgagees, and who 

 now desire to sell it piecemeal. 



The other seven-eighths of the properties sold have, gen- 

 erally speaking, been bought by former middlemen ; for 

 even they had mortgages upon the properties which they 

 managed, as is always the case with stewards of a liberal 

 household ; and there is no cause for regretting it, since 

 property thus takes a more national character. 



Such, then, is the twofold movement accomplished in 

 Ireland, beginning with depopulation, and expropriation 

 following the concentration of farming, and division of 

 property, both brought within proper bounds. Farming 

 is being just sufficiently concentrated to put a limit upon 

 extreme division, without depriving the Irish of the pos- 

 session of the soil. Notwithstanding its detestable rural 

 system, Ireland seems to have preserved one excellent 

 feature namely, the almost entire absence of day-labour- 

 ers, properly so called. Almost all its cultivators, conse- 

 quently, will be capable of becoming small farmers as 

 before, but under more favourable circumstances. On 

 the other hand, the division of property suffices to make 

 it more accessible to the natives ; or, in other words, does 

 away with their estranged and hostile feeling, at the same 

 time that it opens to them a source of credit. 



As for what is properly called small property, the intro- 

 duction of which has been advocated by many clever 

 men among others, Mr Stuart Mill, in his new Principles 

 of Political Economy it appears to me less desirable in 



