ration of remedial measures for Ireland. It is a favourite subject with many writers. It has long been the custom to say, that the country is over-populated, and, beyond all doubt, it is so, with reference to the present actual produce of the soil; but that it is over-populated, with reference to its capacity of production, we altogether dispute. The produce of the soil is not one-third what it might be, if the ordinary systems of husbandry, which are familiar, and practised in England and Scotland, were introduced among

us.

In the ten years preceding the census of 1841, the average annual emigration from Ireland was 40,000. Was this a benefit to the country?— what did we gain by it? The pressure on the resources of the country was not diminished by one-hundred-andsixtieth part; the effect on the competition of the labour-market was wholly inappreciable; and for this inconsiderable advantage we lost very many of the best of our population, men of industry and enterprise, and possessed of some little capital.

There is, however, a description of local emigration which every one must advocate-one in which all the expense and difficulties of transit, and all the other disadvantages of colonial emigration, is obviated-we speak of an emigration to the now waste, but easily reclaimable, lands of our own country. It would be impossible to over-estimate the benefit of a well-devised and comprehensive measure for reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland. Such a measure was recommended by the Poor Inquiry Commission of 1836; it was urged again by Lord Devon's Commission, but has never yet been adopted. The men who have arrogated to themselves the title, and who have put in their pockets the acknowledgment of Irish patriots, have never been found to urge forward a single measure that could really be of the slight est substantial service to the country. It is impossible to deny that if onetenth part of the exertions which were exhibited by the late Mr. O'Connell, for the last twenty years of his life, in agitating for the repeal of the Union-an agitation which has left us nothing but increased poverty, heart-burnings, and discontent had been applied to forcing on a measure for the reclamation of our waste lands, that one million of happy, comfortable, and contented peo

ple, who would be settled on them, would now bless his memory, and upwards of three millions and a-half of fertile and luxuriant acres would perpetuate his fame. But Mr. O'Connell's own property at Derrynane-beg, the condition of which was revealed to us by Mr. Foster, the Times Commissioner, attests how possible it is for the most turbulent vapourers on the wrongs of Ireland, and the most truculent denouncers of the government of the country, to be themselves entirely indifferent to the real and substantial interests of its people, if, indeed, we required any evidence on this subject-if we would not be justifiable in inferring it from the very nature of the selfish agitation with which Ireland for the last twenty years has been distracted. The compilers of the digest of the Devon Commission tell us that, by reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland, "nearly 200,000 families, comprising 1,000,000 of souls, might be permanently and happily provided for, upon lots of eight acres of good, and twelve of inferior land; by this 500,000 labourers will be abstracted from the labour-market, and this, not only without loss, but with very great gain, raising the produce of the 3,755,000 acres of waste land, now not averaging four pounds per acre, to a value of at least six pounds per acre, that is, a new produce of, at least, twenty-two million pounds.'

Mr. Pim fully admits the great importance which would be derived from the cultivation of these wastes, but doubts whether such improvement would not be more effectually accomplished by trusting it to the enterprize of individual speculation-that such speculation is impossible in the present condition of landed property, he confesses. To achieve this, as well as any other improvement in the country, by individual exertion, the proprietor must have full control over his propertyhe must be the owner of an unencumbered estate. We cannot, however, but think, that with so great an amount of unemployed labour, shut up in our poorhouses-labour now absolutely unproductive, and gradually deteriorating by the habits of inertion, which such a mode of life must produce-it would be perfectly possible to devise some mode whereby, in connexion with our poor-relief system, the waste lands of the country might be reclaimed. We have

now, as the result of the enormous expenditure on the poor of the last two years, got nothing but increased indolence, impassable roads, and broken stones. The urgency of the occasion may certainly have been a very fair excuse for the improvidence of the particular measures which were adopted for employing the people. But we have now time to look about us; we have no excuse for a continuance in our errors. The right of the poor to be supported by the land is acknowledged; surely nothing can be more natural than that they themselves should contribute to that support by its culture and reclamation. Every rate

payer would then feel that he was not only contributing to the relief of present distress, but providing for its diminution; and that, however oppressive the rate might now be, there was a certainty in the course of a very few years of its becoming less so. And if it should appear that the first outlay on such a system should turn out to be too considerable to be thrown wholly upon the poor-rates, beyond all doubt, in a matter so materially affecting Irish agriculture, Ireland has an unquestionable claim for support upon the national treasury. We recommend the measure, not as a distinct and isolated one, but in connexion with our poor relief system. The poor-rates should, of course, at first defray the expenditure; but if the pressure upon them should prove to be too heavy for supporting the first outlay, we would then unhesitatingly ask for support from the national exchequer, until the reclaimed lands should begin to prove remunerative, which would be in the course of three or four years. It is perfectly idle to say that all the details of such a measure could not be most readily adjusted; and we confidently hope that another session of parliament will not be suffered to pass over without the adoption of a measure for so desirable an object.

But the measure which, in our judgment, is of all others required for the relief of Ireland, is a measure for

EFFECTING THE SALE OF INCUMBERED

ESTATES. There is a bill now before parliament which is, to some degree, connected with this subject. It originated last year in the House of Lords -in that house in which the great proportion of really beneficial measures has, of late years, for the most

part done. It was introduced by the Lord Chancellor, and having had the support of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Roden, Lord Brougham, Lord Stanley, and every other distinguished member of that house, it was sent down to the Commons, where it was rejected, owing, it is said, to the influence of some great insurance companies, who feared that the effect of the measure would be, that a great amount of land on which they had advanced loans, would be brought into the market suddenly, and that their securities would be thereby depreciated. It was in the present session, however, again brought forward in their lordships' house, and is now once more before the Commons.

This bill as it originated in the Lords (what alterations it may receive in the Commons we know not), is calculated to be of great service; it, however, falls far short of what is required. The great object to be attained, as we have more than once intimated in this article, is that the proprietors of the soil shall have the full and entire exercise of every legal right of ownership; that they shall be, in the fullest sense of the word, independent; that they shall not continue, as they now are, mere nominal possessors of large estates, without interest in them, or control over them; that the improvement of the land shall not be impeded; that the advancement of the tenantry shall no longer be retarded, by the condition of the owners of the soil. The greater number of the landed gentry of Ire land are now so heavily encumbered, that it is quite impossible that they can fulfil the duties of good landlords; with a nominal rental of some thousands a-year, and not as many hundreds to spend, it is in vain that they struggle to support the station which their estate, if unencumbered, would enable them to uphold. The effort is as injurious to themselves as to the country; they are perpetually involved in debt and legal difficulties, while their exigencies oblige them to accept the highest rent they can get offered for their lands, without any selection as to the character of their tenantry, or any ability to assist them. They are absolutely unable to erect upon their farms the dwelling-houses and offices, fences, &c., which should always be constructed by the landlord, as is universally done in England and Scotland, in order that the capital of the tenant

may be applied undiminished to the land; and they are unable, from want of capital themselves, to advance one jot the agriculture of their estates, either by example or instruction, by practical farming, by schools, or any other means. Very many of our gentry would gladly divest themselves of the endless litigation and embarrassments which the cloud of charges upon their estates, mortgages, judgments, annuities, jointures, imposes on them the very law-costs connected with these charges, together with the costs of enforcing the rents of a large rack-rented property, to meet these various and overwhelming demands, wholly absorbs the wretched remnant of their estate which is left to them— but, it is impossible to bring such an estate as this to a sale by any process now available-a bill in Chancery must be filed, all these encumbrancers must be made parties to the suitthey are scattered over various quar ters of the world, yet they must be served with notice of the proceedings-they die in the progress of the suit, and bills of revivor must be filed to bring their representatives before the court. Any one at all familiar with legal proceedings in this country knows well that there are many causes which have been given up by successive solicitors in despair, from the perfect impossibility of getting a perfect suit; and in many other cases the suit has continued in existence for upwards of half a century.

But supposing that a bill is filed for a sale, what is the position of the estate? A receiver is appointed under the courts, shortly after the filing of the bill, and then, indeed, the condition of the lands and of the tenantry becomes hopeless. If absenteeism be an admitted evil of the greatest magnitude, an evil which not even the residence on the estate of one of the many zealous and intelligent agents who are now to be met with in Ireland can compensate, what may not be imagined to be the consequences of having the lands handed over to a receiver of the Court of Chancery. He has no controul nor directing power over the estate-his duties are confined simply to that which the name implies, to the receipt of its profits, and to the payment of the charges to which it is legally subject. He has no power to make any outlay, no matter

how benefici. he may conceive it to be; he must first get the permission of the master in the cause-his application for this purpose will very probably be resisted-the interest of the encumbrancers will be to be paid their money as quickly as possible, and they will naturally oppose any outlay on the estate, of which they can never hope to reap the benefit. Add to this, that the appointment of the receiver is a matter of patronage, not of selection, and that the most inefficient persons, solicitors, barristers, and physicians, are appointed to this office, instead of country gentlemen, or others, whose pursuits would qualify them to discharge their duties efficiently. Thus the property continues for many years managed at great expense and great disadvantage, daily decreasing in value, until at last it is brought to sale. But this again, in many cases, only opens a fresh scene of litigation the purchaser objects to the title, the objections are argued in court, and he is discharged from his purchase. All this entails fresh cost on the property; at last it is sold, with a flaw in the title-and what estate will not ingenious counsel discover such in-and of course proportionably diminished in value-the money is at length distributed, and paid over to the several claimants, many of whom may have become insolvent while they were waiting for it, and all of whom have lost opportunities of using it productively and beneficially. The bill which is now before parliament will remedy some of these evils-it follows, to some extent, the analogy of the railroad acts—it provides that, whenever any person having a charge on an encumbered property shall be desirous for a sale, he shall, on petition, obtain a reference to the master to ascertain whether it be a fit property to be sold under the provisions of this act, as an encumbered estate-and on the master reporting that it is so, that forthwith the estate should be sold, and the money lodged in court, and that all litigation between the several incumbrancers should take place, with respect to the money thus lodged, and not to the estate itself. The land is at once to be sold; all the management by receiver, with the expense and disadvantage consequent thereon, is done away with-the property passes at once into the hands of the purchaser, and, by the bonâ fide

29

20,209 6 11

Total, 1,002 893

The inadequacy, however, of this measure, to meet the exigency of this country, is equally apparent; the thing which is needed is, to transfer the land from an embarrassed to an independent proprietary. This bill merely facilitates such transfer by the time which is now lost in the progress of the suit; it only applies to cases where suits may be instituted; but it does not hold out a single inducement to institute a suit. The incumbrancer is not brought one step nearer to his money than under the present system; he has not got a single additional inducement to proceed to a sale. He sees, indeed, a transfer of his security effected, and government stock substituted for landed property; but the litigation for this money will not be one atom less than it is under the present system, for the land. The same claimants must be brought before the court, the same rights insisted on as under the present system, and the same delay and expense incurred in establishing those rights. We make these observations, not with a view to depreciate this bill, but to guard against its effects being over-estimated.

It is

admirable so far as it goes; but the question is, should it not go farther? It is perfectly easy to see what would

accomplish everything that is needed. It would be to give to some properly constituted authority the power of determining when an over-heavily incum bered estate should be sold, and of instituting proceedings for such a purpose. This would have the effect of at once bringing such properties to sale, and transferring their ownership to solvent proprietors. The purchasemoney would be invested in the government securities, and the only change with regard to the incumbrancers would be, that they would have the security of the funds, instead of the security of the land, for their money. Neither would the funds themselves be over-heavily loaded; for by as much as they were burthened at one end by the investment of the purchase-money, they would be relieved at the other, by the amount which would be sold out by the purchasers. Doubtless, if any incumbrancers were to object to the security which they would thus acquire in the funds, or would prefer four or four and a-half per cent. interest, with the present uncertainty of payment, to the lower interest, and the greater certainty of the government securities, they should institute proceedings to realize their demands and unquestionably the hardship of

thus forcing a number of persons into a litigation, whether they will or not, is, no doubt, considerable. But what is the case at present? Any incumbrancer, no matter how small his demand, or how puisne it may be, can exercise this very power-can involve all the other incumbrancers on the esstate in the litigation consequent on taking legal proceedings for bringing it to sale, in order to realise his demand. And is it not too much to say, that every insignificant creditor shall have the power, and that hitherto, and if the present bill does not pass, it should have been at his option to throw great estates, comprising in some places large districts of country with a numerous and impoverished tenantry, under the management of a receiver of the Court of Chancery, and that neither in that court itself, nor in any other authority, should the same discretion have been vested, to be exercised with such incalculable benefit to the whole community. The Lord

Chancellor of England, in introducing the present bill last February, said"It would be impossible to effect the proposed alteration without doing much that might be considered inconsistent with the rights of property. But he would ask, why should the interests of individuals, and of the community, be disregarded for the sake of maintaining mere abstract rights? In the case of lands purchased for the use of railways, no such hesitation was felt." When a railway company is once sanctioned by act of parliament, it enters on any man's estate through which it is proposed that it should pass, and if there be various incumbrancers on the land, or any difficulty in making out title, it lodges the purchase-money in court, and forthwith has good title against the world by virtue of the act of parliament. The several incumbrancers are put to establish their respective titles to the purchase-money, with which the company has no concern whatsoever. Is it then, we again ask, too much to require, that if a public company shall have this power, from which the only advantage that we gain, is a greater facility of passing from one district of country to another; that some properly-constituted authority shall be invested with the same power, for the purpose of transferring the ownership of our land from an insolvent to an independent proprie

tary, who, if they are to be held responsible for the duties which the possession of property imposes, should at least be in a condition to discharge them :

"The soil of the country," says our author, in connexion with another subject to which we will presently advert, "is the property of the state, granted to its possessors to use, not to destroy. It is a trust for the benefit of all, which should be guarded with peculiar care; because while limited in extent, all must ultimately derive their support from it."

We are fully conscious of the difficulties with which such a subject is surrounded, and of the temper and consideration with which such a measure should be framed, but it has now become a question on which the very existence of the country depends, it is a matter of vital importance to wed the capital of the country to the

soil.

ES.

The means which we have suggested, by which this union is to be effected, by which the proprietorship of the soil is to be identified with the wealth and not with the poverty and embarrassments of the country, is different from that which is proposed by our author. We propose THAT ENCUMBERED TATES SHALL BE SOLD; that the purchaser shall, on depositing his money in court, at once have a good title to the land, and that the several incumbrancers, if they think proper to draw out their money, and do not choose to acquiesce in the public securities in which it shall be invested, and to draw their interest from the public funds instead of from landed property, shall proceed to assert their claims to the purchase money, as they now would to the land itself. The remedy on the other hand, proposed by Mr. Pim, is the abolition of entails, and of the power of settlement.

We cannot but think that Mr. Pim's views upon this subject are founded on misapprehension, and that when he proceeds to support his case by citing the injurious operation of the strict system of entail which prevails in Spain, in Sardinia, and some other countries, he is reasoning from a state of things which is wholly unknown to England or Ireland. Neither in England nor in this country is there any such thing as strict entail known. The only in