Ch. xi. Condition of the Poor considered. 383 



" there is not within a given time land sufficient 

 " for a cow, and half an acre of potatoes, assigned 

 " at a fair average rent, subject to appeal to the 

 " sessions, to have a right to demand shillings 

 " per week of the parish for every child, till such 

 " land be assigned ; leaving to landlords and 

 " tenants the means of doing it. Cows to be 

 " found by the parish under an annual reimburse- 

 " ment."* 



" The great object is, by means of milk and 

 " potatoes, to take the mass of the country poor 

 " from the consumption of wheat, and to give. 

 " them substitutes equally wholesome and nou- 

 " rishing, and as independent of scarcities, na- 

 " tural and artificial, as the providence of the Al- 

 " mighty will admit. "f 



Would not this plan operate, in the most direct 

 manner, as an encouragement to marriage and a 

 bounty on children, which Mr. Young has with so 

 much justice reprobated in his travels in France? 

 and does he seriously think that it would be an- 

 eligible thing to feed the mass of the people in-; 

 this country on milk and potatoes, and make them 

 as independent of the price of corn and demand 

 for labour as their brethren in Ireland ? 



The specific cause of the poverty and misery 

 of the lower classes of people in France and 

 Ireland is, that from the extreme subdivision of 

 property in the one country, and the facility of 

 obtaining a cabin and potatoes in the other, a po- 



* P. 78i \ P. 79. 



