Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/57

Rh its influence. Such an object will be far more surely promoted by whatever tends to abate the tyranny of competition, than by offering those who are now hustling one another off the land any artificial inducements to continue the seramble.

Others suggest that the great works of irrigation and reclamation which still require to be executed in Ireland, would more than absorb all the redundant population. To this I reply, in the first place, that during the very period which has witnessed the greatest emigration, larger areas have been reclaimed, than have ever been before; that the productive powers of the soil have been increasing in a ratio nearly corresponding to that at which the population has diminished; and that as we still have one adult cultivator to every six acres of land under crops, it is not any want of hands which hinders the island being converted into a garden from one end to the other. In the next place, the very thing I desire, is to see our surplus labour power, now frittered away in the desultory cultivation of fields which ought to produce twice as much with one-third fewer hands, intelligently applied to the development of the country's resources. All that I contend for is, that while you are collecting your capital, and organizing your plans, for the