Relief of Trade. Boards and Officers of Health (Cholera) Other causes concurred with the natural tendency of every people to have recourse to the cheapest description of food, in encouraging the growth of a large population depending for its subsistence on the potato. Ireland was essentially a grazing country until the artificial enhancement of prices caused by the Acts of the Irish Parliament passed in 1783 and 1784, for granting a bounty on the exportation, and restricting the importation of corn, occasioned an immediate and extraordinary increase of cultivation; and as, owing to the general want of capital, it was impossible to find tenants. for large tillage farms, the stimulus intended to act exclusively on agriculture, had a still more powerful effect in causing the subdivision of farms. The new occupiers also, being, for the most part, exceedingly poor, instead of paying their labourers in money, allowed them the use of small pieces of ground whereon they might erect cabins and raise potatoes, and their labour was set off, at so much a-day, against the annual rent. The plan of dividing and subdividing for the purpose of making freeholders, was carried to a great extent after 1792, when the elective franchise was restored to the Roman Catholics; and although the practice was far from being general, yet in some parts of the country, where particular families made it their object to contest or secure the county, it was carried to a very pernicious extent. Another powerful cause is that the emoluments of the Roman Catholic priesthood, including the bishops, depend not only on the extent of the population, but also on its continual increase; and if the parish priests object to emigration and the consolidation of small holdings, and look with favour on early marriages, it is only what any other body of men, in their circumstances, would equally do. Lastly, the small holding and potato system offered the inducement of large rents, obtained at the smallest possible amount of cost and trouble. The embarrassed and improvident landlord, and the leaseholder whose only object it was to make the most of his short tenure, equally found their account in this state of things, and the result in both cases was, that the farms were covered with hovels and miserable cottiers, in order, through them, to create profit-rents. When the failure of the potato forced all the "squatters" and "mock tenants" into notice, the owner of many a neglected estate was surprised by the apparition of hundreds of miserable beings, who had grown up on his property without his knowledge, and now claimed the means of support at his hands. The subsistence of the tenant was at the minimum; the rent was at the maximum; and the interval between the ignorant excitable peasantry and the proprietor in chief, was filled only by the middleman, whose business it was to exact rents and not to employ labourers. The base and the capital of the column were there, but the shaft was almost entirely wanting. The extent to which the welfare of the agricultural population, and through them of the rest of the community, is affected by the conditions upon which landed property is held, has become fearfully apparent during the present social crisis. The dependence for good and evil of workman on master manufacturer, of subject on Government, of child on father, is less absolute than that of the Irish peasant upon the lord of the soil from which he derives his subsistence. This is a subject to which, if we would save ourselves and our country, it behoves us to give our most earnest and careful attention at the present time. We cannot give landed proprietors the will and disposition (where it is wanting) to fulfil the important part they have to perform in the scheme of society, but we have it in our power to strike off the fetters which at present impede. every step of their progress in the performance of the duty they owe to themselves and to those dependent on them. One half of the surface of Ireland is said to be let off in perpetuity leases, with derivative and subderivative interests in an endless chain, so as to obtain profit-rents at each stage; and these leases are often open to the additional objection that they are unnecessarily burthensome or uncertain from the particular mode in which they are made; such as "leases for lives renewable for ever by the insertion of other lives when the first-named are dead," "for three lives or thirty-one years," and "for three lives. and thirty-one years." Many proposals have at different times been made for the redemption of these various interests; but an arbitrary interference with the rights of property is to be avoided, and our object should rather be to give every prudent facility for the voluntary transfer of land and of the various interests connected with it, which must lead, by a safe but certain. gradation, to that degree of improvement of the existing tenures which is necessary for the encouragement of agriculture. In the flourishing islands of Guernsey and Jersey, corn-rents of fixed amount are charged upon the same farm one after another, like the coats of an onion; but the lowest holder, who is the party really interested in the improvement of the property, has every requisite security that he will enjoy the whole profit of any outlay he may make, and the most essential part of the benefit of ownership is thus obtained. In Mayo and other western counties the old barbarous Irish tenure called Rundale (Scotch runrigg), still prevails, which stops short of the institution of individual property, and by making the industrious and thriving responsible for the short-comings of the idle and improvident, effectually destroys the spring of all improvement. The cessation of this antiquated system is an indispensable preliminary to any progress being made in the localities where it exists; but this improvement may be effected by the landlords without any change in the law. The master evil of the agricultural system |