indigent occupiers and more constant employment for the labourer; for it is quite evident that an area cultivated by 10 farmers and 15 farm servants in constant work, would be better managed than if it were subdivided amongst 15 farmers who gave only occasional employment to 15 labourers.[1]
To those who closely watch the transitional phases of our national life, it is very evident that
- ↑ We should probably exceed the truth if we said that a third part of the Irish labouring population were employed all the year round. The remaining-two thirds obtain work at the seasons of extraordinary demand, viz., at the potato-digging,
people are characterized. No tariff upon land or rent can possibly dry up these two copious springs of national evil; and until they are dried up our crimes and our miseries will probably continue."—Dig. Dev. Com. p. 76.
"In a country in which farms are in general too small to afford employment for hired labour, a peasant has scarcely a chance of being able to gain a livelihood, unless he obtain possession of land; and in Ireland the competitors for land are so numerous that the price paid for the use of it has reached a degree of exorbitancy unheard of elsewhere: such keen competition clearly shows that population is excessive, that is to say that the labouring class is too numerous in proportion to the amount of employment for it; but it would be a mistake to regard this redundancy of population as a consequence of the prevalence of small farms,"—Thornton's Peasant Prop. p. 188.
"From these premises it may be inferred that the present misery of the Irish peasantry is of no recent origin, but has been from time immemorial an heirloom in the race. The number of labourers has always been greatly in excess of the demand for labour, and the remuneration of labour has consequently never been much more than sufficient to procure the merest sustenance."—Dig. Dev. Com. Summary, p. 195.
Though these observations are less applicable now than when originally made, there is still too much truth in them.
