Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ grave political offence of extensive interference not only with portions of private property, (which, all admit, may be justly taken, on reasonable compensation, for public objects,) but with the whole income of many individuals. This offence is of such a character, that we can hardly expect to see a measure involving it ever adopted by any legislature in this country; and it must be confessed that, however well adapted such a measure may be to the exigency of the present time in Ireland, the precedent thereby established would go far to justify many acts, as regards other possessions of property, which can hardly be called by any other name than spoliation.

      These are the considerations which lead us to believe that, in the present circumstances of Ireland – a population having grown up in the absence of any poor-law – with which a law, enacted tardily, and at a most disastrous period, cannot be expected to cope – the newly-acquired right to existence of the Irish poor must be aided and supported – as was always desired by Mr P. Scrope, and all the more enlightened advocates of that measure, and at one time proposed by the present Premier – by another measure, on the part of government, whereby employment may be procured for them, the resources of the country improved, and the proprietors taught, by example much more effectually than they can ever be by precept, how these duties, now legally imposed on them for the benefit of the poor, may be made to consist with improvement of their own position.

      What is often said of the impolicy of government coming into the market for the purchase and improvement of lands in Ireland, as deterring private speculators from coming forward, and checking the influx of really productive capital, would be a very fair allegation, if the object in view were merely the economical one of raising the value of the land and the income of the landed proprietors. But this is not adverting to the real difficulty of the case, the existence of a redundant population– the result of the causes above explained, but now possessing a legal right to existence in the country—much more numerous than is required for that improved cultivation of the soil, which would be the most obviously and rapidly profitable to the proprietors. The problem for solution is, not simply how to enrich the country, but how to enrich it without exterminating any part of this redundant population. This is no object for private speculators, looking only to pounds, shillings, and pence; but it is, or should be, an object of paramount importance to the government of a country, to whom even an increase of wealth ought to be desirable, not for its own sake, but because it is the essential condition, and therefore the exponent, of an extension of human happiness; to whom, therefore, the lives of the poor ought to be at least as sacred as the purses of the proprietors and capitalists in Ireland.

      Taking this view of the duty of government, we may cordially acquiesce in the statement of Mr Thornton, quoted and approved by Mill, that the great want of Ireland at this moment is, not the influx of capital (as it might be if we were at liberty to disregard the lives of the people, and look only to the wealth of the country,) but the protection and encouragement of its industry, and such an increase of its capital only as may be consistent with, or even produced by, an increase of the labour of all its able-bodied inhabitants. And it is because it is evident that the existing proprietors cannot in general perceive how this is to be done, or command the means of doing it, that the interference of government appears to be the only possible means of rescuing that unhappy country from misery.

      Many high authorities are fully convinced that the improvement of the cultivated portion of the land, and even of the rents of the proprietors, may be equally well effected by the petite culture, by keeping the cottars in their places, and merely giving them instruction as to cultivation, and security for a fair share of the profits of the improvements they effect – as by clearing the land of them, and enlarging the farms. All who have studied the subject, seem to be agreed as to the very general "almost superhuman" industry of peasant proprietors, in all parts of the world, and among all races of men. "The idea of property, however," says Mr Mill, "does not necessarily imply that there should be no rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely implies, that the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the possessor by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord." "Give a man a secure possession of a bleak rock," says Arthur Young, "and he will turn it into a garden; give him only a nine-years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert." It is accordingly stated by this author, and by others, as the result of experience, that long leases, at a low rent, will effect wonders, even in Ireland; and in proof of this, Mr Mill refers to the example of a company, called the Irish Waste Land Improvement Society, who have undertaken improvements in Ireland, not by creating large farms, and cultivating them by hind labour, but by farms only of a size sufficient for a single family – giving, however, small advances of capital, and a temporary security of tenure by thirty-one years' leases. Col. Robinson, the manager of this Society, reports of their operations in 1845, – "These 245 tenants and their families have, by spade husbandry, reclaimed and brought into cultivation 1032 acres of land, previously unproductive waste, on which they raised, last year, crops valued at £3896, being the proportion of £15, 18s. each tenant; and their live stock, now on the estates, is valued, according to present prices in the neighbouring markets, at £4162, being at the rate of £16, 19s. for each – £1304, a sum equal to their present annual rent, having been added since February 1844;" and he adds, "By the statistical tables and returns, it is proved that the tenants, in general, improve their little farms, and increase their cultivation and crops, in nearly direct proportion to the number of available working persons of both sexes of which their families consist." The occupants of larger farms than 20 acres, he states to be "a class too often deficient in the enduring industry indispensable for the successful prosecution of mountain improvements."6 Mr Mill's general conclusion is, that "under the new Irish Poor-Law there are no means for the landlords for escaping ruin," (as has been stated above,) "unless, by some potent stimulant to the industrial energies of the people, they can largely increase the produce of agriculture; and since there is no stimulant available so potent as a permanent interest in the soil, either the present landlords, or their English mortgagees, to whom the estates of the more impoverished landowners must inevitably pass, would find it to their advantage, if not to grant at once this permanent interest to their tenants, at least to hold out to them, the prospect of acquiring it."7 To the same purpose, Sir Robert Kane states his belief that "there are not people enough in Ireland for the small-farm system" if it were carried on in the manner which the experience of other countries has shown to be practicable, and which requires only a certain amount of instruction and of encouragement to the tenants, to enable them to raise at least as much produce, and pay a better rent, than large farms would do.8 But although this appears a very probable, as well as hopeful view, of the position of the cultivated parts of Ireland, and of the prospects of individual proprietors undertaking to reclaim the wastes, yet it is obvious that we can have no security for the landlords taking this view of their position, and that it would be a very questionable stretch of power to compel them to act upon it. And what we wish particularly to urge is, that it is not necessary to come to any decision on the disputed question of the grand or petite culture as applicable to the cultivated districts of Ireland, because the waste lands fortunately furnish a resource which is clear addition to the existing means of maintaining the agricultural population, available at a small preliminary expense only, which, we maintain, ought to be borne by the government of this country. The redundant population being thus disposed of, all the landlords will be left at liberty to try whatever modes of improving their estates they may think fit – subject always to this salutary check, that if by any of these modes they render an additional part of the population redundant, they will be compelled, by the poor-law, to pay more or less for them.

      The digest of Lord Devon's report shows, that there were in Ireland, when it was drawn up, "326,089 occupiers of land, whose holdings were under eight acres each, and that the consolidation of these small holdings, up to eight acres, would require the removal of about 192,363 families; but, then, the first class of improvable waste lands in Ireland (on which we wish to see them employed) would furnish to all those removed families locations of about eight acres each – or, the first and second qualities of improvable waste land, taken together, СКАЧАТЬ