fortable lodging, fair remuneration, and above all, permanent employment. It is this growing difficulty of obtaining an unlimited amount of casual labour at low rates during summer, that is weaning the embarrassed tenant from his yearning after land. Eventually those only will be able to engage in farming with advantage who can either reduce their need of the labourer to a minimum, or can afford to pay him good wages all the year round. Hitherto the agricultural class has been composed too exclusively of occupiers, who though able to perform the ordinary operations required on their farms during two-thirds of the year, were dependent at seed time and harvest on a half-employed labouring population, who were relegated to idleness and penury, the moment the grain was sown, or stored.[1] A worse distribution of industry could not be imagined. What we want are fewer
- ↑ "Of the four seasons, two—the spring and autumn—are passed by our farmers in industry, however injudiciously applied. The summer and winter are too frequently passed by them in idleness."—Dig. Dev. Corn. Summary, p. 366. "No fact seems established more clearly by the Land Commission evidence, than that employment for the agricultural labourers is almost universally deficient."—Ibid. p. 473. "The wretched condition of the labourers in Ireland is a necessary consequence of this deficiency of employment. The supply of labourers being so much greater than the demand for them, the employers are able to rate their wages at the lowest amount which will support life."—Ibid. p. 474. "Every searching inquiry shows how extensively the want of employment and the want of enlightenment in their art influence the numberless indications of social derangement in Ireland, whether resulting in the miseries or crimes by which her
