the people and produce of the country, with every acquisition they can make, are not sufficient to supply 1." "This is an evil long complained of." "There is no country in Europe which produces and exports so great a quantity of beef, butter, tallow, hides, and wool as Ireland does; and yet, our common people are very poorly clothed, go bare-legged half the year, and very rarely taste of that fresh meat with which we so much abound. We pinch ourselves of every article of life, and export more than we can well spare, with no other effect or advantage than to enable our gentlemen and ladies to live more luxuriantly abroad." "And they are not content to treat us thus, but add insult to ill usage: they reproach us with our poverty, at the same time that they take away our money 2."

Dean Swift describes the consequences of absenteeism. He says it "required those great remittances which perpetually drained the country" that it drove "half the farmers and labourers into beggary and banishment;" in a word, that it was the one great evil of Ireland-" Nostra miseria magna es 5."

5,,

That this state of things has continued to the present day, and I fear increased, admits of little doubt. The effect of absenteeism is every where obvious to the eye. "So numerous are abandoned edifices in Ireland," says a recent intelligent writer on that country, "that they keep alive a train of melancholy ideas in the mind of the traveller. They who reared these piles, and filled these rooms with mirth, who gave

plenty and employment to the poor, are now in their tombs, and their living successors, dead to patriotism, dwell in other lands, and leave the home of their ancestors a wilderness.-Every one must wish such absentees could be made to reside in the country, -to enrich it with their fortunes, ornament it with their taste, improve the morals of the people by their example, refine them by their politeness, and protect them by their authority; then might we hope to see the laws respected, the rich beloved, and Ireland tranquil and happy'." But the scientific agriculturist is still more struck with the misery occasioned by this grand evil, than the sentimental traveller. Young is copious on this subject, and Curwen faithfully describes, from ocular proof, the "ruin" it inflicts'; and as to misery-speaking of an estate belonging to some absentee, he says, "the waters of oblivion can never wash out the stains which the scenes of woe, witnessed this day, have impressed upon my mind"."

I shall not proceed with these quotations; but appeal to the many attempts that have been made both of a public and private kind, as well as the statutes that have been from time to time passed to repress this great evil, of the existence of which they form a mass of public evidence. Much, however, as has been attempted, nothing has been effectually and permanently done, and the evil has even gone on increasing, more especially since the rebellion, and the legislative union of the two kingdoms, till the amount of property thus

p. 267.

'Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland, * Curwen, Observations on the State of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 255. 3 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 187.

annually abstracted is calculated at some millions', forming a very onerous tax upon the entire rental and income of the country. Had England, even, been doomed to bear such a burthen, she would never have arisen to her present towering height; were it now imposed upon her in an equal degree, it would ultimately reduce her to the condition in which Ireland is, and in which she must remain till the load is finally lightened or removed.

(4.) The low and degrading poverty to which Ireland is thus reduced, though in itself a great evil, is, nevertheless, one of the very least which absenteeism inflicts. And first, as to those which are caused by the total abandonment of the most important duties. Few, I think, who are the advocates of the social system, and especially amongst those who are placed at its summit, but must be eager to acknowledge, that the duties it imposes are reciprocal, and that their due discharge becomes the more important, the more elevated and commanding the station occupied. What, then, I would ask, must be the certain consequence, when those whom civil institutions have placed in the highest rank, and invested with the most extensive influence, totally abandon their proper sphere, and desert their numerous and degraded dependents? As to wealth being accumulated or diffused under such circumstances, the very idea is preposterous. There are none to give employment to those who, in an advancing state of society, are liberated from the lowest drudgeries of life; none to excite genius, or reward merit, none to confer dignity and elegance on 'Wakefield, vol. i. p. 290, note.

society; to lead in the march of civilization; to diffuse knowledge or dispense charity. That state of society which has a tendency to separate itself into two classes only, the rich and the poor, has, from the time of Bacon downwards, been reprobated by all whose opinions are deserving of regard; but that in which poverty constitutes the sole class, is still more pernicious and unnatural. And thus it is wherever absenteeism universally prevails; there wealth shuns the labour by which it is fed, and the industry by which it is distinguished: rigorously exacting all its dues, fancied or real, and returning none to those to whom they are as truly, though not as legally owing; carrying off the products of the vintage of nature, even to the very gleanings, to a far country, and leaving the refuse to those who cultivate the soil and express the juice; muzzling the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn, which is fed with the husks, and goaded to desperation.

(5.) But this abandonment, simply, is not all with which absenteeism stands charged. It substitutes, for neglected duties, positive wrongs of the deadliest character. Absent in the body, it is indeed ever present in the spirit of cruelty and oppression. Its very existence implies a train of evils, which have been for centuries past the most cruel scourges of the country: I mean the underletting system. Amongst these middlemen, as they are called, there may be, and no doubt are, men of high honour and humanity; but such exceptions render the cruelty and extortion of the entire class the more conspicuous. The sacred bond which ought to unite the superior and the in

ferior, the landlord and the tenant, is broken: mere mercenary connexions are all that remain, a thousand of which may be dissolved at once without costing a single thought. This is a system of which the middlemen, nay, very often many subordinate ranks of these carnivoræ, are the ministers', whose sole possible motive is present gain, and whose conduct corresponds with it. The experimental labours of this class are highly beneficial to the whole body of landed proprietors; they can calculate to a nicety how much and how long a little cultivator can endure; and know the precise period when it is best to "drive him.” They thus not only act for the absentee, but are a sort of pioneers for the rest of the landlords, and by constantly exercising their instruments of devastation, have certainly cleared the way for those enormously high rents, which, to the great discredit of too many of the proprietors, are extorted from the suffering peasantry of Ireland2. Here too is the principal cause of those

"Undertakers inured to tyranny and extortion." (Bishop Woodward, Argument, &c. p. 17.)-See Reports on the State of Ireland, pp. 38, 590, &c.

I cannot better preface a few subjoined proofs of this assertion, than in the words of a dignitary of the Church of Ireland, in a little work, entitled "Lachrymæ Hibernicæ." Speaking of the causes of the wretched poverty of Ireland, he thus expresses himself: "We know here we touch a tender subject. We have observed how the Irish landlords started up in anger, in the house of commons, when it was hinted that their lands were let at too high a rate, and, of course, unless his insignificance secures him, the writer expects to meet his share of their reproach. Notwithstanding, he says, and he has the opinion of some of the ablest men of the nation to confirm it, that the lands of Ireland are, generally speaking, let at an exorbitant over-value.”—(Grievances of Ireland, p. 8.)

As this evil, too, is attributed to the "principle of population,” which, in every attitude it assumes, and every dogma it delivers, 'is still the avowed enemy of the mass of mankind; let the following proofs, which might be multiplied to any extent, show that the in