162 



way. As the places are but small here, they will 

 .not admit of planting. When he has to manure, it 

 .has also to be carried to the field by men, still it pays 

 him better than the best land on his farm ; indeed, 

 there is no other that he has nearly the same pro- 

 .duce from. There are hundreds of acres managed in 

 this way throughout the Highlands of Scotland, and 

 produce 80 bolls of potatoes in each acre, and the 

 ditches always full of water. 



- The vast quantit)rof different kinds of waste and 

 unproductive lands, as has already been shown in 

 another part of this work, and the means of cheap- 

 ly and profitably improving and reclaiming all 

 such, by planting what cannot be pastured or crop- 

 ped ; by pasturing what cannot be cropped ; and, 

 by draining and cropping the bogs, &c. has been, 

 I trust, clearly made out beyond the possibility 

 of fair and impartial contradiction. That there 

 are few, or I may almost say, no proprietor in 

 Ireland of any extent, but who has less or more 

 of some of these kinds of wastes to improve ; and 

 were each of them, on their respective properties, to 

 get about their improvement, this would be the best 

 poor laws and emigration laws that could be intro- 

 duced into Ireland, as it would at once give employ- 

 ment to the labourers, and raise their wages to what 

 would enable every labourer to feed and clothe 

 his own family and poor friends, as no one would see 

 their father or mother begging if they had the means 

 of keeping them ; so that, if the labourers had work 

 at a fair wage, there would be, comparatively speak- 

 ing, but very few on charity. A man, with a wife 

 and eight children, and only earning 8d. or 9d. 



a-day, (as is the case in Ireland) must be starved 



e 



