The Irish Land Acts/Topography
SECTION I.
Topography of Ireland.
Topographically, Ireland has been likened to a saucer. Generally speaking, the centre of the country is a great plain; a patchwork of rich pasture lands and immense turf bogs, drained by sluggish rivers, while the seaboard is mostly fringed by ranges of hills and mountains. The coast-line between Dublin and Dundalk is an exception. There, the plains of Meath and Louth run to the sea unguarded by any line of hills. These geographical characteristics largely explain the difference in the holdings and the agricultural methods that have been adopted by the farming population in the four provinces of Ireland. As I explained in my Report on the condition of Tenant Purchasers (1903), Agricultural holdings in Ireland may, roughly, be divided into four classes characteristic of the different provinces:—
I. Ulster is practically surrounded by a coast-line of cliffs and hills running from the Mourne Mountains, in Down, around the Antrim coast, to Donegal, which very largely consists of rugged mountains. The interior of the province is a region of low, rounded hills, and has been compared, as regards its physical characteristics, to a basket of eggs. It is a province of comparatively small tillage holdings, the grass on which is usually produced in the course of a rotation of crops. Little permanent pasture exists, and tillage is almost a necessity in Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. Fermanagh is largely devoted to pasture and dairy farming, while Donegal in character resembles Connaught.
II. Leinster, with the exception of Wicklow, which is principally mountainous, is a province of large holdings, mainly pastoral, used for the grazing and fattening of cattle. Meath and parts of the neighbouring counties contain some of the richest pasture lands in Europe, and the result is that its agricultural population is small and rather inactive, as compared with Ulster and certain districts in the South and West. Mixed tillage and dairying are carried on in Kilkenny, Carlow and King's and Queen's Counties. Louth is a county of rather large mixed tillage and pasture holdings. Wexford is mainly tillage, worked in many respects similarly to the better parts of Ulster. Much of Leinster—from Kildare to the Shannon—is covered by immense bogs, among which a poor and congested population struggles for subsistence.
III. Munster is a province of mountains and plains, some of which comprise rich pasture lands. It is chiefly given to dairying, and the holdings are of two classes: (1) pastoral dairying in the richer parts of Tipperary, Limerick, Waterford and Cork; and (2) mixed tillage and dairying—the tillage being subservient to the dairying—in the poorer parts of Cork and Kerry. Clare is largely pastoral in character.
IV. Connaught—with the exception of East Galway, Roscommon, and the plains of Mayo—is a province of poor holdings, with small and struggling peasants, living on the margin of subsistence. The holdings are chiefly used for rough grazing, tilled where possible, and as a rule small in size. Roscommon and East Galway are largely devoted to the grazing of store cattle, and act as feeders to the fattening farmers of Leinster.