Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/36

 equitable mode of creating a great number of small landholders, say of twenty acres each, and of the yearly value of one pound per acre. The English freeholder, acting on the principle of free trade in land, finding that his twenty acres would sell at forty years' purchase, and that at 5 per cent, he would obtain forty pounds a year, and at 4 per cent, thirty-two pounds a year, would sell his land. He would easily find a secure investment at 4 per cent., and a tolerably secure one at 5 per cent. His family would rejoice; and the difference of income would be to him of much more importance than the freehold franchise; while the buyer, being probably a large proprietor, would be willing to get 2 or 2½ per cent, for his purchase-money, and would consider the convenience of having twenty acres of preserve for his game bordering on, or perhaps enclosed in, his large estate of more importance than the difference of income. In Ireland, on the other hand, the small landowner would keep his freehold, and would take advantage of his property to introduce numerous sons, sons-in-law, and brothers-in-law on the twenty acres, not one of whom would improve the land, not one of whom would maintain that degree of comfort and ease which bespeaks a happy, instructed, and contented people. Thus, in England the progress of absorption by the rich would go on; while Ireland would make a large retrograde step, and old evils and old miseries, a wretched tenantry, low wages, ragged clothing, and precarious subsistence would re-appear in all their deformity.

The State, as it appears to me, without interfering