countries that farmers are hard masters to labourers; but in Ireland at present it is not in their power to make hard terms. The grievance of the labourers is that they want houses and are driven from the land. It may possibly be said, in their behalf, that the confirmation of existing claims to the land would be in some sense unfavourable to landless persons,-that it would make land dear to acquire for those wishing to become farmers, although they would have much better security when they get it. In truth, however, the labourers do not raise this cry, they would be much more likely to get the cabin and the potato-ground, which they want, under the farmers (if the farmers were allowed to give it them), than under the landlords; and the landlords are the last people who are entitled to raise this cry for them. It is the landlords who are so strongly against turning the labourers into farmers, and who, on the contrary, are so anxious to turn the farmers into labourers. And it is the landlords who have driven the labourers from their lands in their excessive dread of overpopulation and poor-rates. Wherever you go in Ireland the most constant practical grievance of the present day is the excessive strictness of the very best landlords in preventing the erection or restoration of labourers' dwellings ́on the farming lands, or even the reception of any one into the houses of the farmers. In England this clearing of the land has been denounced. In Ireland it is still considered a virtue in the opinion of the upper classes. But I have been assured by several of the best agents of good landlords that, in their opinion the system has been carried too far. Most of the labourers have left the country altogether; those who have not are driven into the towns. And so far from promoting the gradual formation of a farmer and labourer system, it is now notorious in Ireland that labourers are so difficult to be got, so dear, and so independent, that it is impossible to cultivate profitably with hired labour, and the farmers more and more depend on their own families alone. Rich model landlords build a few model labourers' cottages near their own residences; but the country generally is closed to the labourer.

We have thought it right to quote this passage without curtailment, because it involves matters of the utmost importance in the settlement of the land question in Ireland. No doubt, a primary object of the minister, in any Measure which he may propose to Parliament, should be to do justice between the owners and the occupiers of land in Ireland. But there is another object not incompatible with this, and of still greater importance to the empire at large, and this is, to make Ireland an integral portion of the strength and greatness of the empire. We quite agree with Mr. Campbell that the grievance of the labourers is that they want houses in the country, and that they are driven from the land. But when he adds that they would be much more likely to get the cabin and potato-ground which they want under the farmers (if the farmers were allowed to give it to them), than under the landlords, he should have said, under the farmers who till their

lands, and not from the graziers. We speak of the graziers as a class; for, of course, there are many honourable exceptions; but as a class they are the greatest enemies of the poor and the greatest exterminators in the country. An exterminating landlord is the exception; an exterminating grazier is the rule. Few of the graziers spend one penny on improvements; they give no employment, and, in general, they do not give one acre of their 500 or 1,000 even to the herdsman who takes care of their flocks. Let any man travel over the rich lands of Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, or Roscommon, and he will see the truth of what we state. There are whole parishes in which not a single herd has an acre of land; and not unfrequently when a grazier, more generous than his class, gives an acre of land to his herdsman, he is remonstrated with by his neighbours as setting a bad example. A gentleman asked a grazier lately, who occupies about 1,200 statute acres why he did not give his herd one acre of land; and his answer was, "I pay him good wages, and is not that enough for him?" And yet this grazier is an advocate of the extreme doctrine of tenant-right. He denounces his landlord, although he is as good a landlord as there is in Ireland, and declares that Parliament will do nothing unless it hands over his holding to each occupier in fee-farm, at what he calls a moderate rent; that is, at about one-fourth of its letting value. We are not aware that any landlord has interfered to prevent the grazier from giving a small quantity of land to his herdsman, and consequently the whole responsibility rests with the grazier himself. About half the entire area of Ireland is grass land. The total area in 1861, was 20,815,460 statute acres. The extent of land under grass in 1866, exclusive of meadow and clover was 10,001,244. In 1867 the acreage of corn crops was 2,115,700, of green crops 1,432,410, of meadow and clover 1,658,335, making a total of 5,206,445 acres. The remainder of the area is occupied by waste lands, water, bog, &c. The proportion, therefore, of the grass lands to the tiled lands is nearly as two to one. A great portion of the grass lands is let out in farms of from 200 to 1,000 acres. The same grazier often occupies several farms in different parts of the country. He has his greedy eye on every small tillage farm in his neighbourhood, and whenever it becomes vacant from any cause, he is almost sure to get it, for he is known to be rich; he can afford to pay, if the land be good, a very high rent, for he is at no additional expense, and has no additional establishment to keep up. The farm is turned into grass, the labourers are dismissed, and their cottages thrown down, and the man and dog who took care of the 500 acres take charge

of the twenty or thirty which have been added. The tillage farmer, whose ancestors have changed the barren waste into fertile fields, has been banished with his family, and has gone to swell the ranks of the Fenians in America, and the labourers who worked the farm, being driven from the lands, seek shelter in some wretched slums in the nearest town, and are quickly enrolled in the same confraternity. It is thus that all the rich lands of the country are being rapidly converted into grass lands, the small tillage farmers and agricultural labourers banished from the soil, and the ranks of the Fenians recruited. But having said so much of the graziers, we must give the landlords their due. In three provinces-Leinster, Munster, and Connaught they have looked with an evil eye on the small tillage farmer and the agricultural labourer. By the bad landlords they have been ruthlessly and inhumanly exterminated, the others have got rid of the small holders by gentler means; but by whatever means the small tillage farmers have been got rid of, the farms have been consolidated, and generally, wherever the soil was rich enough, grazing has been substituted for tillage. Very often the landlord binds the tenant not to till more than a very insignificant portion of his farm, and not to build any cottage or labourer's abode on it, except that which is required for the herdsman. This principle has been carried so far, that landlords who are in other respects good and humane men, will not permit their tenants, whether graziers or tillers, to build labourers' cottages on their farms, and the result is that the labourers are banished from the soil, and driven, with the most embittered feelings, to take refuge in the towns of Ireland or England, or to go to America. This prevents the employment of labour and the improvement of the land. We know instances where agricultural labourers are obliged to walk eight, and even ten statute miles per day, to and from their work. This is the real cause of the outcry in the agricultural districts-that there are no labourers. Build a comfortable cottage for the labourer on the farm, give him an acre of land to grow potatoes and vegetables for his family, and reasonable wages, and there will be no lack of labourers to occupy them. The farm labourers who are masters of the situation are unmarried men who can live in the farmhouse, and they are masters because the farm labourers with families who must have cottages of their own have been banished from the lands. No doubt, as far as wages are concerned, the condition of the labourer is greatly improved, but no one can say that they are too high. "In agriculture," says Mr. M'Claren (p. 39), "the work is very uncertain; in some seasons, as in spring or harvest, there is a great deal to be

done, and the labourer is generally fully employed; but during the rest of the year the work is scarce, and anything but constant. Hence I found wages at six or seven shillings per week during the busy seasons, and not more than four or five shillings during the winter. I believe that the wages of the agricultural labourer will not exceed five shillings per week, wet and dry, throughout the year."

So far is it from the fact that there is abundance of employment for the agricultural day labourer, that in many of the towns in the grazing districts during the past autumn, subscriptions had to be raised to support their families because they could get no work to do. But if the agricultural labourers were distributed over the country instead of being driven into the Irish and English towns to recruit the ranks of the Fenians, there would be abundance of employment for them in the great and necessary works of draining the country, of reclaiming its waste lands, and in cultivating six or seven millions of acres, which every competent judge declares would be much more profitable if they were tilled by human hands, instead of being given over entirely to the beasts of the field. "Above all," says Mr. M'Combie (p. 10), "the Irish are needed at home. If Ireland is to become what she ought to be-if her agricultural resources are to be developed-it can only be through a largely-increased application of labour to the land. For the half-idle, half-famished population of Ireland, ever merging into beggary, so widely diffused over Ireland, there is abundance of work, could they only be set to do it. . . . There is one point on which no practical farmer visiting Ireland can entertain a doubt, namely, that there is nothing in the physical characteristics of the soil of Ireland to prevent it from offering an adequate field of labour for all the population now depending on agriculture."

The farmers are not Fenians, but the unlimited power over them with which the law invests the landlord, and the numerous instances in which it has been abused to oppress the tenants, has made them sympathize with the Fenians. A just measure of tenant-right would greatly weaken the Fenian cause by depriving it of that sympathy. But should no effort be made to reclaim the Fenians themselves? Mr. Campbell thinks they should be put out of the question altogether. If they are left out of the question altogether, will any measure of tenant-right pacify Ireland? Let Limerick and Dundalk answer. In Limerick and Louth the Fenians would not permit tenant-right meetings to be held until all their brother Fenians who have been convicted of treason-felony should be released. Let Tipperary answer, where the advocate of fixity of tenure

and low rents was defeated by O'Donovan Rossa. The American Fenians are beyond the reach of our direct interference, but their hopes of an Irish republic would be at an end, and they would soon become powerless if they had no longer any considerable number of members or sympathizers in Ireland. The Fenians consist chiefly of labourers and the lower class of artizans. We believe the numerous body of farm-labourers who have swelled the ranks of the Fenians have been enlisted through being driven into the towns, where Fenian centres and circles exist. By scattering them over the face of the country, where they would have comfortable cottages and a garden of the extent of an acre of land at a reasonable rent, the link between them and the town Fenians would be broken, and besides, they would have an interest in the soil which would go a long way towards curing them of Fenianism.

It is said that large portions of the highlands of Scotland, from which the small tillage farmers were evicted and the lands turned into pasturage, are becoming wastes, and that, in order to save them, it will be necessary once more to till them. The lands may be reclaimed, but the hardy and noble mountaineers who once tilled them have disappeared for ever. If all the small farmers could be driven from the Irish soil, as they certainly have been driven from the richest portions of it, and the whole island turned into pasturage, we think that this is a policy which, apart from its injustice and inhumanity, no wise English statesman would pursue. "In obedience to a prejudice," says Mr. Samuelson),* "fostered by a hasty expression of the late Earl of Carlisle when Lord Lieutenant, that Ireland, owing to its moist climate, is adapted rather for pasture than for husbandry, hundreds of thousands of acres have been laid down to grass which are admirably suited for arable cultivation. The annual average rainfall recorded at Glasnevin is scarcely, if at all, in excess of that of the western counties of England, and below that of some of the best mixed farming districts of the west and south of Scotland. The certainty and luxuriance of the turnip and other root crops in Ireland, which in England are so liable to failure, and the dry, friable soil, our English clays being almost without example, still more than counterbalance the uncertainty, or, speaking more broadly, the absence of the wheat crop, owing to deficient summer heat." Mr. Samuelson is quite mistaken about the wheat crop, which is produced successfully and profitably, not only in the south, but in the north of Ireland. Indeed, he

* P. 7 and following.