general, and I will admit, a not unreasonable timidity about adopting the system of outdoor relief. After the terrible experience of the period which immediately followed the famine, it was natural that the effort should be to make the provisions of the Poor-law as stringent as possible. But there has been since then an entire change in the conditions of the case. The emigration has greatly reduced the population, the poor rates have fallen to a very low amount, wages are rising, and the time seems to have arrived when the law in this country should be made identical with that of England. The legislature will then be free from responsibility in the matter, and it will remain for the guardians in each district to administer, under the same regulations as in England, their own rates according to their own discretion.
The conclusion at which I arrive is, that two measures are now essential to the well-being of the country: first, a thorough adjustment of the laws relating to land, to the new conditions of production and competition, so as to afford perfect security for capital employed in agriculture; and secondly, a complete assimilation of the Poor-laws in the several parts of the United Kingdom. When it appears that any necessary improvements require the action of the legislature, some persons are apt to abandon all hope of their being effected; especially if the proposed measures are thought, however erroneously, to conflict with the interests of powerful classes. And this despair of legislative progress is likely to produce one or other of two disastrous effects—either social inertia or political discontent. Looking, however, at the history of the country during the last forty years, I do not find that such hopelessness is in the slightest degree justified by fact. The modern policy in the government of Ireland dates from the administration of the Marquess of Wellesley, with Sir Robert Peel for Home Secretary. The first fruits of the new order of things then introduced were, the Commission of Inquiry into the state of education in 1824, which brought to light the large Irish-speaking element to which I alluded at the outset, and the celebrated committees of the Lords and Commons on the state of Ireland, in 1825. Close upon these inquiries followed practical reforms which have been continued in unbroken succession down to the present time. The political disabilities of Protestant Dissenters were first removed; next came the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Ample provision was made for the education of the poor. The police system was brought into full operation. The smaller towns were enabled to govern themselves. Ireland participated in Parliamentary Reform. The administration of justice was improved by the appointment of stipendiary magistrates, and by the reform of the constitution of juries. The fiscal powers of grand juries were regulated. Legal provision was made for the relief of destitution. The municipal corporations were placed on a broad and liberal basis. And finally, the improvement of the laws relating to land was decisively commenced, by the institution of the Landed Estates Court. These are only the principal elements in a series of measures which, taken in the aggregate, make up the largest peaceful revolution in the history of the world.
