Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/23

20 "all spent in manual labour," at the high wages of that county, which are more than double the ordidinary [sic] wages of labour in Ireland. I have the details before me of Mr. Wilson France's expenditure in reclaiming 1,000 acres of Rawcliffe moss, near Garstang, likewise in Lancashire, which amounted to £9,000. This outlay now pays ten per cent.; and the reclaimed bog gives constant employment throughout the year to seventy labourers at high wages.

Why cannot the similar peat mosses of Ireland, where wages are so much lower, be reclaimed with at least equal profit?

But, in fact, Mr. Griffiths, who superintended personally the Government Survey of Ireland, and has been employed all his life in the valuation and survey of the lands, both cultivated and waste of the island, unquestionably the highest attainable authority on the subject, estimates the number of acres of waste bog and mountain land in Ireland, that maybe profitably reclaimed, at four millions; one million and a half for arable purposes, two and a half millions of acres for pasture. Professor Kane's estimate of improvable waste is still higher, namely, 4,600,000 acres. Who has the right to sneer down, or dispute in any degree, these high authorities?

But any one who honestly and fairly wishes for information of a detailed and practical character on the subject will find ample evidence in the report of the Devon Commission, of instances innumerable.