lating to land, they do not yet fulfil the requirements of economic science.
The purpose of my present argument is to show that the emigration has not, as some persons imagine, put an end to the land question; but that, on the contrary, the very same causes which have led to the emigration will force it on public attention with redoubled urgency. Recollect the circumstances under which the industry of the country will go on: intense competition, limiting a rise in prices, and an increasing rate of wages, steadily raising the cost of production. The burden of loss cannot now, as under the reign of monopoly, be transferred to the shoulders of the consumer. If agriculture be unsuccessful, the farmer himself will first suffer, and next the landlord. But the depression will not be confined to them; it will ultimately be shared by all classes of the community, bound up as their interests are with those of the farmer in a country like ours, almost entirely depending on agriculture.
All past experience proves that the climate of Ireland is in a high degree variable; we have had one good season, but who can tell how many unfavorable ones are destined to recur? Abundant harvests may temporarily palliate the effects of the causes I have described; but the next turn of the seasons will bring out the latent forces, and will press upon the agricultural classes with an intensity of which, up to the present, we have had no experience.
The prospects of Ireland must in the main depend upon the success of her agricultural industry; and for this, an adaptation of the laws affecting land to the new economic conditions of production is absolutely necessary. Giving up tillage will not meet the difficulty; for the competition affects the provision trade as well as the immediate products of the soil; and English cattle farmers have discovered that herds and flocks cannot take care of themselves, but that for their proper tending and feeding a large amount of human labour is necessary. In order that the Irish farmer may be able to sustain himself amidst the increasing competition, all that social arrangements can do to aid him must be done. As any nation that wishes to maintain its position must provide against the possibility of warfare by possessing the most improved military weapons—the Minie rifle and the Armstrong gun; as, in the competition of manufacturing industry, the country that does not wish to lag behind its fellows must adopt without delay all the latest improvements in machinery: so it will not do for Ireland, in the race of agricultural competition, to be impeded by any imperfections in the security of capital employed in agricultural improvement. The question is not now whether a particular arrangement is tolerable or not, but whether, for the future, successful competition will be possible, with all the disadvantages of Irish climate, with any but the best arrangements that social science can devise for the application of capital to agriculture. It is vain to assert that the land question is settled; the most thoughtful men in the country, and those who have most deeply studied its economic condition insist, and are able to prove, that it is not settled; men, I will add, whose conclusions on other
