candles, soap, &c. * In Ireland, it is a quantity of land for the support of a labourer a year †.”

The transition from the state of a villein to that of a free labourer cannot be considered as fully effected until the peasant is able to live on wages, without cultivating his own land, and until his wages are regularly paid to him in money. The essential mark of a villein is that he gains nothing by his work: although he may live in a separate house, contract a legal marriage, rear a family, have the use of land, and even though he may be only bound to perform certain specified services, yet he never receives any remuneration from his lord. Now a cottier who rents a cabin and a small piece of ground, and who works for his landlord upon an agreement that the wages are to be set off against the rent, is virtually in the same condition as a villein, if his annual wages never exceed his annual rent, and if in fact he never receives nor can hope to receive anything §. His person may be free, but he can no more

*What is now called the truck system.

Tour in Ireland, Part ii. p. 22.

Grimm Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 350-8.

§ Castle Hyde, county of Cork. "Mr. Hyde complains that it is difficult to hold tenants to occupancy, as juries and even judges set their faces against it. The former, who holds from five to fifty acres, thrives in consequence of the rise of the times, and is never under the necessity of paying anything for labour. The cotter tenant hires a cabin, the worst in the country, with a small patch of potato land, at a rent of thirty shillings per annum. He also agrees for the keep of a collop, or half a collop, which is still lower. At the same time he works for his landlord at the small wages of five pence per day: but when he comes to settle, he receives nothing, as the food of his few sheep is set off against what he charges for labour. In this manner the poor cotter must toil without end; while his family eats up the produce of the small spot of land he has hired. This is called by the lower classes of the Irish working for a dead horse,' that is to say, getting into debt."--Wakefield's Ireland, vol. i. p. 253.

hope to raise himself to pecuniary independence, than the villein who was bound to work for his lord, without claiming any recompense. It is only when a man receives his wages at certain short intervals, and relies upon the payments made to him in money as his means of support, that the transition from villenage can be said to be fully effected.

The remedy wanted for this state of things is to alter the mode of subsistence of the Irish peasant: to change him from a cottier living upon land to a labourer living upon wages to support him by employment for hire instead of by a potato-ground. This change can only be effected by consolidating the present minute holdings, and creating a class of capitalist cultivators, who are able to pay wages to labourers, instead of tilling their own land with the assistance of the grown-up members of their family. But the landlords cannot consolidate farms because they cannot clear their estates. Consequently, the first step towards this improvement cannot be made. If we might be permitted to make a ludicrous comparison on so serious a subject, we should say that this state of things reminded us of the scene in the Critic, in which the two uncles are afraid to stab Whiskerandos lest he should kill their nieces; and Whiskerandos is afraid to stab the nieces lest he should be killed by their uncles. The tenant cannot quit his holding: he has not the means of emigrating, and he cannot get regular employment, there being no large farmers. On the other hand, the landlord cannot eject his cottier tenants in order to make large farms, as he exposes the ejected parties to the risk of starvation, and the new tenant to the risk of being murdered by the Whiteboys.

If an Irish landlord wishes to improve his property, he finds that he cannot venture to lay out capital upon it, without increasing the size of the holdings. He cannot erect farm-buildings on plots of a few acres ; the construction and repair of farm-buildings by the landlord implies the existence of large farms, and a respectable tenantry. A landlord has no hold on a cottier tenantry: they are not responsible persons, nor can they be trusted with valuable property. In Ireland, the difficulty of living by wages makes every man look to the land for a maintenance: hence arises the practice of tenants dividing their land among their children, and erecting a mud hovel for each new-married couple. As a man cannot hope to maintain himself by his own labour, he always looks to the principle of inheritance for support; and thus the father is induced to divide among his children whatever he has any power over.

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It is impossible (says Mr. Furlong, the agent of the Earl of Devon's estate in the county of Limerick) to prevent the subdivision of land among the sons; for whether there is a lease or not, they deal with their ground in the same manner. They often make wills, even when they have no lease, and they even give leases when they have none themselves *."

With this constant and irresistible tendency to subdivide land, it often happens that the landlord, at the expiration of a lease, finds thirty or forty tenants, and as many mud cabins, instead of the one tenant to whom the farm was originally let. What is a landlord under these circumstances to do? Either he must surrender

to the evil, which will inevitably go on increasing; or he must set about clearing his estate, in order to con

* Report of Irish Poor Commission, Appendix A., p. 691.

solidate the holdings. Now there are only two ways in which a landlord can set about clearing an estate; he may buy out the tenants, and furnish them with the means of emigration, an expense which few persons are able to incur; or he may forcibly eject them, and throw down their cabins, and thus produce the mischief already explained.

The consequence of this crossing of interests is, that the system is at a dead lock; no individual can by his unassisted energy hope to extricate himself from its shackles and the evil is constantly progressive, enlarging itself by its own action, and creating the necessity for its own continuance. There seems no hope that the society will, by its spontaneous efforts, work out а cure; so far from it, that the rapid and inevitable tendency is from bad to worse. The law alone can furnish a remedy; by its assistance alone can the transition of the peasantry from the cottier to the labourer state be effected. What is wanted is to give the peasant some third alternative besides land and starvation, by which he may be induced to relax that desperate grasp with which he clings to his potatoground. This alternative (as it seems to me) can alone be furnished by a LEGAL PROVISION FOR THE

POOR.

We are quite ready to admit the force of all the objections which, within the last thirty-five years, have been urged against the principle of giving one man a right to be maintained out of another man's property. There is no doubt that it is far better to prevent poverty than to cure it; and that a cure, which produces more disease than it relieves, is a bad one. There is no doubt that if men are guaranteed against the conse

Y

quences of their vice, laziness, and improvidence, it may be expected that they will become vicious, lazy, and improvident. There is no doubt that the duties of family and neighbourhood will be neglected, if the parish undertakes to pay for their discharge; and that frauds will be committed by all classes of employers, if they find that they can pay their workmen with their neighbours' money.

Yet, while we admit to the full all these fundamental objections to the principle of supporting the poor from the property of others, we are not to fix our eyes exclusively on the evil effects of compulsory alms-giving. For instance, if the legal right to relief produces improvidence, insolence, and shamelessness, it also produces a feeling of security for the future, and the absence of fraud and servility in order to gain relief. It may be bad to feel no uneasiness about the future, but it is worse to feel so little secure, as to be tempted to intimidate, burn, beat and murder, in order to avert the apprehended evil. It may be bad to approach the parish pay-table with an unabashed or a menacing countenance; but it is worse to employ the various contrivances for raising money to which the mendicant is forced to have recourse. Nor does it follow that because a particular system of poor-laws, administered in a particular manner, is bad, therefore the absence of all legal relief is good. The reverse of wrong is not always right. The natural system may, in a diseased state, produce the same results as the abuses of the artificial system. If the English poorlaws have had their Swing fires and their riots, the Irish voluntary system has had its Whiteboyism.

However, admitting, as we do, the full force of the