forming such duties as these, are sometimes slack in the discharge of them, and require a constant supervision in order to prevent them from sleeping at their posts. How much more is it to be expected that peasants, who take upon themselves the gratuitous discharge of such onerous and such perilous services, should withdraw themselves from their office when they are no longer urged on by the pressure of an imperious necessity?

If a system of legal relief was at once established in Ireland, which should comprehend all classes of destitute persons, and if that relief was administered to each person at his own house, it is difficult to foresee what would be the ultimate consequence of such a poor-law; but its immediate consequence would be, that the poorrate, if levied upon the land, would swallow up the entire rent and tithe *. It would, in fact, amount to an agrarian law, and that in its worst possible form: as the occupants would remain occupants, but would divide among them the entire surplus produce of the soil, and the landlord would retain the legal title to the land, without deriving any benefit from it. The landlord would, in fact, be merely a trustee in whom the legal estate would be vested, and who would hold the property for the use of his lessees. Far better than such a course as this would it be to adopt F. von Raumer's suggestion, and after the model of Prussia, at once to convert the Irish tenants into proprietors†.

*"It has been proposed by some to establish poor-laws in Ireland; but, from the depressed state of the common people, there is little reason to doubt that, on the establishment of such laws, the whole of the landed property would very soon be absorbed, or the system given up in despair." -Malthus on Population, book iv., chap. 8.

England im Jahre 1835, vol. ii., p. 404. Raumer does not seem

In order to prevent so disastrous an extremity, it would be necessary to guard the administration of legal relief in Ireland, by annexing the condition that it should only be administered in a public establishment into which the party should be received, and to the regulations of which he should submit: in short, that relief in Ireland, as well as in England, should be given only in workhouses.

The objections to this method are sufficiently obvious, and tolerably numerous: but if no plan could be advantageously followed which was not altogether unobjectionable, which had not the unattainable quality of perfection, it is manifest that all human legislation would be impracticable. In the first place it will be said that what is wanted in Ireland is to give employment to the unemployed poor, and that this cannot be done by means of workhouses. To this objection we would answer, that a wise government would never undertake directly so hopeless an object, and one so plainly lying out of the sphere of its proper duties, as that of finding employment for a whole population. The cases where governments have traded on a much smaller scale have so decisively proved their unfitness to perform the part of the capitalist, that a much more signal failure might be anticipated if the Irish government undertook to manage a farm of several million acres. If If any advocate of a poor-law for Ireland wishes that relief should take the form of wages, and the relieving-officer should assume the character of a capitalist employer of labourers, he desires it on grounds quite different from those advanced in these pages, and

to be aware that the English and the Irish tenant are, as far as the law is concerned, in precisely the same situation.

utterly inconsistent with all notion of a legal provision for the destitute. Moreover, it will be observed that the very ground on which a poor-law for Ireland has been above recommended is, that it will ultimately lead to the introduction of a system under which there will be employment for the poor; and that a poor-law can alone lead, though indirectly, to the creation of a class of labourers independent of their potato-ground.

But even those who take a more modest view of the objects of a poor-law, and the capacities of a government, will say, that the expense of a workhouse system in Ireland is an insuperable bar to its adoption. It is true that in England the existence of a large number of workhouses has afforded great facilities for the introduction of the late reform: whereas in Ireland no workhouses exist. But this objection can only come from one who is altogether hostile to the principle of a poor-law for Ireland: for it is clear, that however expensive the erection of workhouses might be, it would be a far less grievous burden than a poor-law unprotected by workhouses. The construction of fever-hospitals on a large scale has not been found impossible in Ireland ; and the same principle might doubtless be further extended. A workhouse might perhaps be required for about each barony; and if the barony was unable at once to defray the expenses of the building, money might be advanced to it by government upon adequate security.

Another objection which will probably be urged is, that in most parts of Ireland there is a prejudice among

the

poor against workhouses; and that as they now in some instances even refuse to go into hospitals, so they would be still more disinclined to enter a workhouse.

To this it may be answered, that the disinclination of the people to be the inmates of a workhouse is the best security which can exist against the evil anticipated by the opponents of an Irish poor-law, viz., that the whole peasantry will throw itself on the rates for support. If the poor are in real want, they will doubtless soon discard their sentimental antipathies to relief in a public establishment, and be eager applicants for the bounty proffered to them. When the general distress of the Irish peasantry is considered, there seems little fear that the candidates for relief will not be sufficiently numerous, in however unacceptable a shape it may be administered. It may perhaps be with some reason supposed that the danger is rather on the other side. But, besides this, it ought not to be overlooked that the main ground on which a legal provision has been above recommended, is not so much that the peasantry will be actually relieved, as that they will feel that they may be relieved: that the prospect of relief will give them security, not the receipt of it save them from destitution. A poor-law in Ireland might therefore dissolve the Whiteboy spirit, by opening the doors of the workhouse to all, although but a few might be admitted into it.

The only remaining objection on this subject which it seems needful to notice is, that the same spirit of combination which has been busied in regulating the terms on which land is to be held, would be turned against workhouses; and that they would be burnt and destroyed by the Whiteboys. If a workhouse in Ireland was built of good materials and slated; if it was placed near a police station; and if it was insured, it is not likely that the public would have much to fear

from the incendiary. But it ought not to be forgotten, that although in England the workhouses have been the objects of attack, as being the means of passing from a laxer to a stricter system, in Ireland they would be a step in advance; they would be, so far as they went, an amelioration of the state of the poor: in England, if the workhouse is destroyed, the parish is thrown back upon the allowance system and domestic relief: in Ireland, if the workhouse was destroyed, the poor would simply remain unrelieved.

The operation of a system of relief in facilitating the transition of cottier farmers into labourers ought at the same time to be assisted by COLONIZATION, and this on as large a scale as the means of the country would permit. The redundancy of the Irish population is so great, that no one measure can in a short time be expected to produce even an approximation to the great desideratum, the maintenance of the peasantry out of wages. An extensive emigration managed by government, and in combination with agents in Canada and the United States, would at any rate assist in bringing about this consummation. If Ireland (as it was once remarked to me) could be stretched out like a piece of India rubber, the peasantry would be as tranquil and contented as that of England. But as this is impossible, we must strive to do what is possible. As we cannot make more land to the inhabitants, we must make fewer inhabitants to the land.

There is one consideration which ought not to be overlooked, with respect to the introduction of poorlaws in Ireland; viz., that it is possible for a peasantry to be in a state, as regards physical comfort, far inferior to the English, and yet superior to the Irish; that the