scarce summers, between, as it is emphatically called, the old and the new crop, wages are so low as four pence or five pence per day; and the great majority are wholly unemployed-their own stock of provisions exhausted, and the market high in prices, if at all supplied with their staple, indeed only, food, potatoes and oatmeal. Thus are they reduced to such a state of wretchedness, that able labourers are anxious to work for their food, without any other wages; while their wives and children stroll through the country, as beggars or petty thieves; and in seasons of extreme scarcity, as avowed and unblushing plunderers. Justifying their deeds by their necessities. By an instinct of the philosophy of nature, resolving society into its primary elements, and appealing to first principles, lodging a protest, which, true or false, it is hard to answer, that their "poverty and not their will consents."

But there is one fact, on the very face of this statement, which may seem to contradict it. How, it will naturally be inquired, can such hopeless wretchedness, not only maintain existence, but propagate and extend itself in all the wide-spread ramifications, and rank luxuriance of unheeded desolation? Few, we believe, know any thing of our poor, who have not often asked themselves this question, with respect to particular families, "How do they contrive to live?" Leaving an interposition of divine providence, little short of miraculous, to fill the awful chasm between the means and the end, we will simply state the means. A dunghill, standing close by the cabindoor, and purchased at the cost of filth, stench, and disease, supplies potatoes until the scarce season of the year. To say how they contrive to live during this season, you should live with them, and watch the hand of that gracious providence, who clothes the lilies of the field, and feeds the young ravens which cry unto him, daily interposing between them and famine. A pig, of which it is scarcely exaggeration to say, that it eats, drinks, and sleeps, with the family, ekes out the deficient produce of manual labour, and thus pays the rent of their dear and miserable holding. This consists of four narrow, damp, unplastered, and undivided, mud walls; within which the whole inmates, males, females, and

pig, eat, drink, and sleep together with little of furniture, and, in scarce seasons, without even a bed of straw-and of a quarter or an half acre of ground, on which the dunghill is manufactured into potatoes. As to clothes, even such as they have, how these are procured, we are wholly at a loss to answer.

This, we are satisfied, will not be considered an exaggerated statement of their misery, by any one acquainted with the condition of the great mass of agricultural labourers; and, we may safely base upon it this conclusion, that on an average of prices and employment, three days in the week, at eight pence to nine pence per day, that is, from two shillings to two and six pence a week, or from five to six pounds a year, is about the product of a man's labour, exclusive of what he does in the potato garden which he rents at nearly this sum, and which is scarcely ever sufficient to supply him with this essential article of his food throughout the year.

In this division, we have, intentionally, passed over a class of labourers, so small and so insignificant, as scarcely to be missed from a general statement. And yet, strange as it may seem, it is this class, which on an improved and more extended scale, and on more liberal principles, we would propose as a model of the plan which we are about to suggest.

Most holders of small farms, exceeding six or eight acres, and who have neither sons nor brothers residing with them, diet and lodge a sort of farm servant, who attends to the more menial occupations of the farm yard, and when unemployed there, labours in the field. This is the lowest grade of agricultural labourer, and his wages we believe, never exceed from three to five pounds a year. Might not this plan be new modelled; and thus adopted by the gentry, the station and liberality of the employer, imparting proportionate respectability and comfort to the situation of the servant.

But to explain this more fully, let each resident proprietor estimate the number of labourers, which the ordinary business of his farm requires. And let him rather exceed, than fall short of the number requisite, since any surplus labour may always be profitably expended in draining, fencing, plant

ing, and other permanent and valuable improvements. Let him select this number from the mass; and let his principle of selection be moral character and habits. If the number exceed six, let it be divided into companies six in each. Of these, let five be unmarried men; and the younger the better, as their bad habits will be less inveterate, and their character more plastic. Let the sixth be a married man; and as very much will depend upon him and his wife, in carrying this plan into effect, particular care should be taken in selecting them. They should be, to say the least, steady, honest, sober, industrious, and of good moral principles. The man, of sufficient moral weight, to maintain his authority over the young men; and able to instruct them in the ordinary processes of agriculture. And as nothing is required in this man and his wife but good morals and intelligence, they may, if carefully sought after, be found in the class of common labourers; and therefore, though the man is to possess the authority of a steward over the five of his company, yet he should not be exempted from labouring with them. A comfortable farm-house should then be erected, consisting of a kitchen with sleeping apartments at one end, for this man and his family, at the other end for the five young men, over whom he is to be placed in the of fice of sub-steward. The house should be supplied with the necessary furniture, cheap and solid, and just such as is calculated to form decent habits in the inmates. Let this sub-steward be supplied at convenient intervals by the steward, with potatoes, milk, oatmeal, butterin fact with the usual fare, or somewhat better, of this class, in a farmer's employment. All the inmates should diet together; the husband should act as head of the family; the wife should cook, wash, mend, and discharge the other household duties for all. From what has been already remarked, as to the product of labour, it would appear that five or six pounds a year wages to each of the five labourers, and something more to the sub-steward, for his own labour and superintendence, and his wife's domestic services, with plain, but plentiful diet, and comfortable lodging to all, would render their condition enviable to the majority of their own class, and enable each of them to

lay by from three to four pounds a year. We do not, however, take upon us to fix precisely the wages; we would leave this to persons who may be better acquainted with the practical detail, and local circumstances of each neighbourhood. The principle by which they should be regulated is, that they would enable a man to clothe himself decently, and then to lay by, at least, two or three pounds each year.

If this system were carried into operation, there can be no doubt that it would produce, so far as they deserved well in other respects, a decided preference of Protestants. Because where you were purchasing a man's whole disposable labour, you would certainly prefer him, who had less fear of working than of drinking, on the many Roman Catholic holidays, which, even under the present system of daily engagements, the farmer often finds so inconvenient. It will not, we trust, be denied, that the religious improvement of his dependents should always be an object of deep interest to a Christian landlord; and where no hostile prejudices interpose a barrier, of practical attention. In furtherance of this object, it should be a standing rule, at least among the Protestant inmates of these establishments, to assemble daily to family prayer, at which the sub-steward, as head of the family, should officiate; and if he were a pious man, which, of course, would be a main object with every pious landlord, a system of religious training might be superadded to his other offices, which would be, in the highest sense, a blessing, not only to the estate, but to the surrounding neighbourhood. He should make regular reports of his household, and any man incorrigibly idle, immoral, or insubordinate, should be expelled. Of course, from the constitution of these establishments no man who married could continue in his situation. But as, on the other hand, no advantages could compensate the ill effects which must result from an undue restriction of marriage; and as the prospect of marriage, not as the thoughtless or desperate plunge of recklessness, or of sensual appetite, but as the avenue to domestic rest and enjoyment, and the privilege and reward of honest industry, is a stimulus to much that is excellent, and a check upon much that is evil; any man who

ruptcy, ruin, and wretchedness, which fell to the lot of the vast majority, has passed away. The later supplies serve but to glut the market to satiety, lie on hands, are returned, perhaps damaged, and unsaleable. The employers become bankrupt. The operatives are thrown out of employment. The panic stops even the steady, though small, employment, which a due supply of the home market demands. And thus, this swelling wave of commerce, which gently wafted from our shores, on its smooth and sunny bosom, a gay vessel, rich in merchandise, and buoyant in hopes, returns a breaker, bearing upon its treacherous surface a shattered wreck-carries desolation and bankruptcy into our manufactories, and famine, wretchedness, and discontent throughout the land.

But it will be said, "This over-supply, with all its evil consequences, has been, you admit, but the effect of that competition, which an over-population, necessarily produced. Nothing can put down that competition, which does not provide employment and food, in some other quarter, for the excess of competitors above the demand. How do you provide for these?" We do not at all propose it. Perhaps emigration alone can relieve the country of this political dropsy. If, indeed, the swellings of popular turbulence were to subside. If English capital, and skill, and enterprise, could explore our mines, and work our manufactories, without fear of conflagration and ruin. If absentee proprietors could improve and reside upon their estates, without risk to property or person, then, perhaps, emigration might not be necessary. But is it the object of the agitator that the country should be peaceful and prosperous? Will priests and demagogues permit this? Will a feeble, timid, truckling administration, selling the country to repealers, that they may as the purchase money, keep, a little longer, their own places, compel them to permit it? We say, "No," to all. And therefore, we believe emigration necessary. We merely propose means of preventing the recurrence of this plethoric habit, when the country has been thus relieved. And, under the operation, we would save the patient from being drained of the heart's blood, instead of the corrupt humours, by staying the emigration of the decent,

We

the moral, the religious-in a word, of the protestant. We are convinced, that no system will ever keep down an overpopulation. Promote moral and prudent habits. Impart a sense of decency; of wants; and of comforts to the people, which does not, in every department of society, restrain, within due limits, that reckless, gambling spirit, which lives, as the phrase has it, from hand to mouth and which does not give certainty and steadiness to the labour market. The means here proposed are principally conservative; and of course, principally contemplate a healthful state of the country. It cannot, certainly, be carried into full and general operation, until the present excess of population has been disposed of. This too, we admit, cannot in justice be rashly or hastily done. say, in justice. A few commercial adventurers who have long since failed and disappeared, have created the paupers of England. But in Ireland, the landlords are, as to all moral obligation, their fathers. Their electioneering ambition and rack-rents have virtually begotten them; and in justice, no les than in prudence and benevolence, they must not throw them off, until they see them, in some way or other, provided for. But let them now deliberate on the means, which, when this evil is removed, may prevent its recurrence. And let those, whose estates are already clear, and who are, therefore, at liberty to keep them so, immediately adopt the means best suited to this effect. Let them do so, not only for their own benefit and comfort; but also, that their estates may furnish, as it were, model schools, tested and approved by experience, to instruct the country in general, should our long provoked, but long-suffering and gracious God, ever bring it again to a healthful condition, in the best and most effectual means, under the divine blessing, of preserving it moral, prosperous, and happy.

Of the two causes to which we have alluded, as giving birth to our agricultural paupers, namely, electioneering ambition, and rack-rents, the priests have already removed the former. Few landlords, we believe, will again stock their lands with freeholders. How soon these spiritual rulers of Ireland may deem it prudent to dispose of the latter cause, let the landlords of Ireland