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the potato crop and such extraordinary causes, there are other obvious reasons to send the population of Ireland in such numbers to the United States. In Ireland, most of the profitable land has long since been cultivated, and, in accordance with the well-known law, yields every year a less proportionate return to the amount of labor and capital expended on it. From the surviving influence of the feudal system of real property, the purchase of small portions of lands is difficult. From historical causes, Ireland has suffered much, and is poor. In many parts of Ireland, before the famine, labour was only 4d. a-day: it is believed, now, not to be less than 6d. in winter and 8d. in summer. But even this is a miserable reward for a day's labour. In the United States, on the other hand, but little of the profitable land has been cultivated; and the purchase of land from the Government, or even from private parties, in most of the States, is one of the easiest transactions to be imagined. In the Western States, agricultural labour is about half a dollar a day, whilst every species of skilled labour is paid at a very high rate. If the small farmer chooses to buy a few acres, the whole improvement of the farm belongs to himself alone. This last inducement is in itself sufficient to bring a number of small farmers from Ireland, who now can obtain but little security for the fruits of their industry expended on the land. For in Ireland, with the exception of the districts where the custom of Tenant-right prevailed, the small farmer, holding as tenant from year to year, has not, nor ever had, the slightest legal guarantee that, if he built, fenced, and drained, his rent would not, as a natural consequence, be raised, and himself compelled to pay the owner for the permission to use such improvements, contrary to every principle of natural law.
In a word, the poverty of Ireland, and the want of security for the fruits of industry expended on the land, are the main causes of the regular emigration—independent of the present pressure arising from the failure of the potato. And, but for distance, ignorance, and the love of country and friends, I consider a much larger emigration would now be proceeding. As it is, when so many of the Irish have already gone, when so many in America think of their friends left behind as to send them yearly £400,000, it is more than probable that the emigration of labourers will proceed until the ordinary wages of agricultural labour will be, in Ireland, about 1s. 10d. a-day; whilst the emigration of small capitalists who wish to buy land will proceed until the present system of the law of real property is abolished, and until it is as cheap and easy to purchase land in Ireland as in America.
I rejoice that labourers in Ireland are no longer content to work at their present rate of wages, but that they try their fortunes in another land. If they were permanently so content, the greater part of this population could never rise from semi-barbarism. I say, distinctly, semi-barbarism; for scarcely any more deplorable condition can be imagined than that of the Irish-speaking peasantry of the south-west, who, by their ignorance of the English language,
