ART. IX-THE ADULT AND YOUNG OF THE

POOR-HOUSE.

Irish Waste Land Settlements, versus Emigration and Foreign Wild Land Settlements. Specially addressed to the Poor Law Guardians of Ireland. By James Hayes, C.E. Dublin: W. B. Kelly, 1858.

Forty years ago Sir Walter Scott wrote "The time will come when the whole land will be hypothecated to the poor, and by the strangest and most unexpected of revolutions, the labourers in the country will be substantially in possession of the whole rental of that soil in which participation is now refused them."-And now, after this lapse of time, we find that in this instance, as in many others, Sir Walter was truly "The Wizard of the North." The whole land is "hypothecated to the poor;" the whole social state of Ireland is altered, and through the results of the famine, and under the cruel confiscations of the Incumbered Estates' Court, this generation has witnessed "the strangest and most unexpected of revolutions," and it sees the labourers and paupers of the country "in possession of the whole rental of that soil in which participation was refused them." In the old days of potatoes and pigs, the pig was "the gintleman that paid the rint ;" things are now changed; the rate-payer is the pig, who not alone pays the rent of the poor-house, but supplies board and clothing into the bargain. That the poor of a country have the first claim upon its resources, none will deny; but unfortunately, in Ireland, it is considered a matter about which there can be no question or dispute, that because a man or a woman is a pauper, he or she has a consequent right to rot out life in idleness, in sloth, and, too often, in vice. One rarely hears the term Workhouse, in Ireland; in ordinary conversation the Union Mansion is invariably called the Poor-house, and with great propriety; it is certainly a house for the poor, a house at which boards meet and squabble, occasionally job, and sometimes "cook the elective franchise:" but it is not a house in which steady, useful, and continuous work is made a portion of the every-day duty of the lives of all able-bodied, or healthy inmates; it is not a house in which self-dependence and self-respect are shown to spring from honest labor.

Whence this awful state of facts arises, is one of those ques tions about which men cannot agree. Some attribute it to the red tape of the Poor Law Commissioners' office; others will have it that all the evils spring from the grasping avarice of the ex-officio guardians; others proclaim that no matter whence the mischiefs have their origin, all are perpetuated and increased, through the stupidity, stolidity and pennywise schemes of the elected guardians. That all those who may be considered accountable for the evils of our Poor Law system should be somewhat unwilling to accept the responsibility of being the authors of these abuses, is not to be wondered at. Who would acknowledge himself the supporter of a system which results in crowding our streets with prostitutes, the Lock wards of our hos pitals with patients, our police offices with rogues, our Convict gaols with prisoners, our colonies with worthless, because idle, and ignorant, and unskilled labour; a system which trains the poor-house-reared child to consider that house as his home, because it destroys energy and self-reliance, by a permitted idleness, producing in time, a torpor of every worthy faculty of mind and body.

But, it is often asked, what can we do with them? To this our answer always is, do not teach them that emigration is the object of life; do not let them fancy that all the people of Ireland, not guardians or poorhouse officials, are born for the sole purpose of going to America-teach them that we must all labor, wherever we may be-in a word, keep them at home and work them.

Mr. Hayes, whose valuable pamphlet we have placed at the head of this paper, is a man evidently able to observe and reason for himself. He is, beyond all doubt, a genuine and thorough Irishman, and being neither a bucolic ex-officio, nor a shipping agent, he has been able to convince himself that emigration is not so good a thing for our labouring population as useful employment at home here in Ireland; and in proving this somewhat unfashionable doctrine he gives to the nationalist and to the capitalist one of the most useful and instructive essays it has been our good fortune to read for many a day.

Mr. Hayes addresses his pamphlet to the Poor Law Guardians of Ireland, and we shall here endeavour to condense his arguments. He laments the decline of the small farm system which once prevailed in this country, and he writes:

"Nothing, as I apprehend, can be more unreasonable or more

unjust than to expect to find in a country like ours-differing so remarkably from England in essential characteristics-equal results from a given system; and those who advocate the adoption of that peculiar English practice, must do so in complete ignorance of the conditions of the two countries, forgetting that what may be beneficial to the one, might prove fatal to the other.

England-a peculiarly manufacturing country with numerous cities and towns, actively engaged in some branch or other of industrial art manufactures, capable of absorbing the labour of the rural immigration cannot feel immediately the evil results arising out of the system "which has peopled cities at the expense of villages." But can this be said of Ireland? On the contrary, ours being essentially an agricultural country, the rural population, driven into the cities and towns, only become a source of trouble, and eventually a burthen; for as we possess no manufactures of any extent, and have no prospect of acquiring them, while watched by the jealous eye of England; so our civic districts can hardly be expected to afford any expansion of their present limited powers of employing labour.

In truth it may be inserted that the more the consolidation of farms takes place, the worse off the towns become; for not only will they have to bear a disproportionate share of taxation, but they must also endure a considerable loss of business, since no person can reasonably maintain that the custom of the family of a farmer, occupying 500 acres, will be an equivalent to that of fifty families, each holding ten acre farms.

You cannot be insensible to the fact that the population of Ireland, instead of increasing, is still decreasing, that the deaths and emigration considerably exceed the births, and that the estimated total loss of population from 1841 to 1857 is nearly 3,000,000; so that our population in place of being over 9,000,000 in 1851, was actually found to be only 6,552,385! Is it not then our duty to endeavour by some means to check this immense stream of emigration which drains our country of the best of her population?

I find that in the year 1851, the sum of £21,075 was contributed by seventy-nine Unions of Ireland, for the purpose of sending to the colonies and to the United States of America some 4,386 emigrants; how much more money since or before that year may have been devoted to the same object, I am not at present in a position to say; but no doubt a very considerable sum has been sent out of the country in this way, by the several Unions which you represent; and it appears to me that such means of affording relief to the rate-payers does not redound to the permanent advantage of the country. I conceive that, at best, you only resort to such a system as a transient and wretched expedient, and that emigration manifestly does not prevent pauperism."

With the absorption of the small farms came the epoch of wholesale emigration, or as it used to be called, the Irish Exodus. Referring to this subject, Mr. Hayes writes:

"We have now arrived at a point when it becomes a serious duty

ques.

Whence this awful state of facts arises, is one of those tions about which men cannot agree. Some attribute it to the red tape of the Poor Law Commissioners' office; others will have it that all the evils spring from the grasping avarice of the ex-officio guardians; others proclaim that no matter whence the mischiefs have their origin, all are perpetuated and increased, through the stupidity, stolidity and pennywise schemes of the elected guardians. That all those who may be considered accountable for the evils of our Poor Law system should be somewhat unwilling to accept the responsibility of being the authors of these abuses, is not to be wondered at. Who would acknowledge himself the supporter of a system which results in crowding our streets with prostitutes, the Lock wards of our hos pitals with patients, our police offices with rogues, our Convict gaols with prisoners, our colonies with worthless, because idle, and ignorant, and unskilled labour; a system which trains the poor-house-reared child to consider that house as his home, because it destroys energy and self-reliance, by a permitted idleness, producing in time, a torpor of every worthy faculty of mind and body.

But, it is often asked, what can we do with them? To this our answer always is, do not teach them that emigration is the object of life; do not let them fancy that all the people of Ireland, not guardians or poorhouse officials, are born for the sole purpose of going to America-teach them that we must all labor, wherever we may be-in a word, keep them at home and work them.

Mr. Hayes, whose valuable pamphlet we have placed at the head of this paper, is a man evidently able to observe and reason for himself. He is, beyond all doubt, a genuine and thorough Irishman, and being neither a bucolic ex-officio, nor a shipping agent, he has been able to convince himself that emigration is not so good a thing for our labouring population as useful employment at home here in Ireland; and in proving this somewhat unfashionable doctrine he gives to the nationalist and to the capitalist one of the most useful and instructive essays it has been our good fortune to read for many a day.

Mr. Hayes addresses his pamphlet to the Poor Law Guardians of Ireland, and we shall here endeavour to condense his arguments. He laments the decline of the small farm system which once prevailed in this country, and he writes :

"Nothing, as I apprehend, can be more unreasonable or more

unjust than to expect to find in a country like ours-differing so remarkably from England in essential characteristics-equal results from a given system; and those who advocate the adoption of that peculiar English practice, must do so in complete ignorance of the conditions of the two countries, forgetting that what may be beneficial to the one, might prove fatal to the other.

England-a peculiarly manufacturing country with numerous cities and towns, actively engaged in some branch or other of industrial art manufactures, capable of absorbing the labour of the rural immigration-cannot feel immediately the evil results arising out of the system "which has peopled cities at the expense of villages." But can this be said of Ireland? On the contrary, ours being essentially an agricultural country, the rural population, driven into the cities and towns, only become a source of trouble, and eventually a burthen; for as we possess no manufactures of any extent, and have no prospect of acquiring them, while watched by the jealous eye of England; so our civic districts can hardly be expected to afford any expansion of their present limited powers of employing

labour.

In truth it may be inserted that the more the consolidation of farms takes place, the worse off the towns become; for not only will they have to bear a disproportionate share of taxation, but they must also endure a considerable loss of business, since no person can reasonably maintain that the custom of the family of a farmer, occupying 500 acres, will be an equivalent to that of fifty families, each holding

ten acre farms.

You cannot be insensible to the fact that the population of Ireland, instead of increasing, is still decreasing, that the deaths and emigration considerably exceed the births, and that the estimated total loss of population from 1841 to 1857 is nearly 3,000,000; so that our population in place of being over 9,000,000 in 1851, was actually found to be only 6,552,385! Is it not then our duty to endeavour by some means to check this immense stream of emigration which drains our country of the best of her population?

I find that in the year 1851, the sum of £21,075 was contributed by seventy-nine Unions of Ireland, for the purpose of sending to the colonies and to the United States of America some 4,386 emigrants; how much more money since or before that year may have been devoted to the same object, I am not at present in a position to say; but no doubt a very considerable sum has been sent out of the country in this way, by the several Unions which you represent; and it appears to me that such means of affording relief to the rate-payers does not redound to the permanent advantage of the country. I conceive that, at best, you only resort to such a system as a transient and wretched expedient, and that emigration manifestly does not prevent pauperism."

With the absorption of the small farms came the epoch of wholesale emigration, or as it used to be called, the Irish Exodus. Referring to this subject, Mr. Hayes writes:

"We have now arrived at a point when it becomes a serious duty