Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/190

Rh an admission very damaging to the advocates of the small farm system; but though in some respects there may be a saving of labour, over extensive areas, as compared with very diminished ones, the necessary difference will be found far less than is supposed;—within certain limits, economy of labour, though not of buildings or of machinery, is as practicable on reasonably small farms as on large. If a proof were wanting, we need only again refer to the table, when we shall see that the tillage lands of Ulster and Leinster, the two provinces from which the largest rate of produce per acre is obtained, are cultivated by a fewer number of hands than are crowded into the husbandry of