arguments against legal relief, which have been urged by Mr. Malthus, Dr. Chalmers, and Mr. Senior*, it yet seems to me that there are peculiar circumstances in the present condition of Ireland which nullify all these reasonings. All legislative theories are founded on a certain supposed simple state of things, from which all extraordinary and disturbing forces are abstracted. Hence, in applying theory to practice, it is always necessary to add those facts which exist in the given case, and to consider, first, whether any of the existing facts are different from the data assumed by the theorist; and, secondly, whether those additional facts which exist in reality are sufficient to counterbalance the conclusion indicated by the naked theory. It is this latter process in which consists the main difficulty in the application of scientific knowledge; for it may happen that the theory may be correct (that is, it may be logically deduced from true premises), and yet there may, in the individual case, be other circumstances existing, together with those supposed in the theory, which destroy its validity. Thus a scheme for a machine, made on the hypothesis of the absence of friction, would probably fail, if tried with materials whose surfaces acted on one another. In like manner

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* The principle of the chief objection to compulsory relief is well stated by Tacitus, in relating the refusal of Tiberius to follow the example of Augustus, in bestowing money on a spendthrift nobleman named Hortalus. 'Dedit tibi, Hortale, Divus Augustus pecuniam (Tiberius is made to say), sed non compellatus, nec ea lege ut semper daretur; languescet alioqui industria, intendetur socordia, si nullus ex se metus aut spes; et securi omnes aliena subsidia expectabunt, sibi ignavi, nobis graves." Ann. ii. 38. Tiberius speaks as the representative of the state, and therefore says "nobis graves."

+ Those who talk of "true in theory and false in practice" have probably some obscure perception of this truth.

it is scarcely possible to conceive any legislative theory which shall be applicable in all possible combinations of circumstances. The advocates of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy have been for more than two thousand years respectively attempting to prove that each form of government is the best, but without satisfying mankind that different forms of government are not suited to different states of society. Free trade is on the whole beneficial, but a scarcity might justify a prohibition to export corn. Free circulation of persons is beneficial, but the existence of a pestilential disease might justify the stoppage of intercourse.

Now there are (as it seems to me), in the present state of Ireland, peculiar circumstances sufficient to outweigh the general arguments against compulsory relief; there is an object of paramount importance to be attained by this means, which no other measure will reach. Poor-laws are (in my opinion) imperatively needed in Ireland, not in order merely to relieve the sick, the aged, and the infirm; not merely to provide for widows, deserted children, and orphans; not in order to prevent Protestant landlords ejecting their Catholic tenants for electioneering purposes; not in order to stop the immigration of the Irish into Great Britain; not in order to raise the price of corn, and to diminish the exportation of Irish agricultural produce; but in order to give the Irish peasant an alternative besides the possession of land and starvation, and this for the sake of facilitating the transition from small to large farms, from the rude to the systematic mode of cultivation.

The facilities which a legal system of relief would offer for the effecting of this transition, and for the con

version of the peasant from a cottier living by potatoes into a labourer living by wages, would arise from two sources. In the first place, an ejected tenant would not be exposed to the danger of destitution, unless provided for by his landlord: he would have a public place of refuge to fly to in this hour of need. In this manner the landlord would be able to call in the aid of the community for effecting that change which he himself cannot by his unaided means bring about, and by which the community will ultimately profit. Not only, however, would the ejected tenant find an asylum in his misery, but the tenant in possession would feel that ejectment would not to him imply destitution, and other persons of the same class would feel that in general depriving a man of his holding is not equiva lent to depriving him of his means of subsistence. Hence that feeling of desperation with which the Irish cottier rivets himself to his cabin and potato-ground would be removed; and the sympathy with the Whiteboy who avenges the cause of the ejected, and protects the occupying tenant, would gradually cease; would the landlord find the feelings of the community. arrayed against his own and their permanent interest..

nor

When any vicious system has interwoven itself with the habits and thoughts of a whole population, when men's moral judgments and sympathies have been permanently perverted by the working of a pernicious but overwhelming interest, it is difficult by any legislative measure to effect any sudden change, and in such cases we deplore the inefficiency of laws without the custom of obedience or the disposition to enforce them. But in the case of Ireland, however hopeless it may be to attempt by legislation to produce any immediate and. marked improvement in the mass of the poor, yet there

seem to be symptoms that the Whiteboy system might be suddenly checked, and that it would soon fall to pieces under the influence of a protecting government, of a government which supplied the guarantee against destitution which the Whiteboys now seek to create for themselves. It is not possible to make a sudden improvement in the general morality, or the skill, or the knowledge of a whole population; but it is possible suddenly to insure them against the consequences of despair. That the Whiteboy system is the creature of circumstances, not of moral habit, appears from the conduct of the Irish who have migrated to Great Britain. The Irish, who settle in the large towns of Scotland and Ireland, may be said on the whole rather to be deteriorated than improved in their moral character; and yet crimes of combination, in any way resembling those arising from the Whiteboy spirit, are utterly unknown among them. The Irish in England have never hitherto shown more disposition to avenge the cause of a dispossessed tenant than the English themselves. If the change produced in the circumstances of the Irish peasant in England by the change of place should be produced in his circumstances in Ireland by a change of law, there is every reason to expect that similar consequences would ensue. hold it of great importance (says Dr. Chalmers) in estimating the probabilities of any eventual reformation among the people to distinguish between the virtues of direct principle and the virtues of necessity. The former require a change of character, the latter may only require a change of circumstances. To bring about the one, there must either be a process of conversion, which is rare, or a process of education, which is gradual. The other may be wrought almost instan

"We

taneously by the pure force of a legal enactment. There are many habits that may be regarded as the immediate fruit of external circumstances, and that would quickly and necessarily give way when the circumstances were altered; and these are altogether distinct from other habits that essentially depend on the moral or the religious principles of our nature* ” Now the tendency to violent outrage among the Irish peasantry is precisely one of those dispositions which are the creatures of circumstances, and is very far from being one of those habits which are proverbially said to become a second nature. These habits are always agreeable for the present, though their consequences may be injurious; but from what has been above said t, it is obvious that Whiteboyism is, for the parties concerned, an exceedingly troublesome and dangerous system, and that it is only kept up by a great and constant effort. The intimidation practised on the peasantry, in order to compel adherence, is a sufficient proof that the Whiteboy for the most part works with unwilling instruments, however strong the feeling may be among the persons menaced that the system is for their benefit. The individual who commits the outrage does not reap any personal advantage from it ‡: and in order to commit it, he must bestir himself to get arms, and to hide them; he must procure powder and ball; he must go out at night; he must attack houses and men, and expose himself to resistance, to wounds, to capture, to detection, to conviction, and to punishment. Persons paid by government for per

* Christian and Civic Economy, vol. ii., p. 237, note. + Idem, p. 193-203,

Ídem, p. 234.