Page:Considerations on the state of Ireland.pdf/7

 incidents of the late meeting of the Social Science Association in Edinburgh was the working men's supper, at which Montevideo beef was for the first time introduced to the notice of the public, and since then both at Limerick and in our own city attention has been called to this article of food. Great numbers of the cattle of Uruguay have been hitherto slaughtered merely for their hoofs, horns, and hides, the flesh going absolutely to waste; for the future the meat, slightly salted and dried, is to be sent to the United Kingdom, and can be sold in the English market for 3d. or 3½d. per pound. In wool, flax, butter, and every other article of agricultural produce, a far keener and more extended competition may for the future be looked for, than has hitherto existed. Hence arises the following difficulty for the farming and landed interests: There is a rising rate of wages in Ireland, which increases the cost of production of home commodities; concurrently with this, there is an intense and growing competition on the part of foreign producers, which will more and more have the effect of limiting the rise of prices. How are the agricultural classes to meet the grave crisis arising out of these new economic conditions?

What resources they have, we shall best discover by considering, successively, the three instruments of production. First, as to labour: the rise of wages is sure to improve its application and promote its economy; the utmost that can be made of it will be made; and it will, when possible, be assisted by the use of machinery. Secondly, as to capital: it has sometimes been supposed that the farmers of Ireland do not possess the capital necessary to be expended on the proper improvement of their holdings. But this notion is completely dispelled by the statistics of the deposits in the Irish joint-stock banks. It is not disputed that the greater part the sum thus deposited is the property of the farming classes. Now the aggregate of the deposits amounted at the close of the year 1859 to upwards of sixteen millions sterling. It has, of course, since declined, and is now probably less than fourteen millions. But the country, under the influence of one bountiful harvest, is beginning to recover from the effects of three bad seasons; and the amount of the deposits will, no doubt, ere long increase to its former level. This money is lent to the banks at an average of 2 per cent. to be employed either in our large towns or in England; and is available to assist the improved system of Irish production, which the growing competition will imperatively demand.

Coming now to the third instrument of production, the land, it is essential to consider whether the conditions under which the capital and labour of the country can be applied to it are in a satisfactory state. Now, some of the leading members of our Society have, ever since its foundation, devoted special study to this question, and it is plainly the result of their researches, that notwithstanding the important changes which have been made in the laws re-