tle, and English and Scotch the majority of her population. The nine or ten millions of Irish who by that time will have settled in the United States, cannot be less friendly to England, and will certainly be much better customers to her than they now are. When the Celt leaves Ireland, he leaves an almost purely agricultural country, and in such countries man is always little better than a slave. Coming here, he finds himself in a country in which to some little extent the farmer and the artisan have been enabled to come together; and here he becomes a freeman, and a customer of England. That the nation that commences by exporting raw products must end by exporting men, is proved by the following figures, furnished by the last four censuses of Ireland: Not To what causes may this extraordinary course of events be attributed? Certainly not to any deficiency of land, for nearly onethird of the whole surface- including millions of acres of the richest soils of the kingdom - remains in a state of nature. to original inferiority of the soil in cultivation, for it has been confessedly among the richest in the empire. Not to a deficiency of mineral ores or fuel, for coal abounds, and iron ores of the richest kind, as well as those of other metals, exist in vast profusion. Not to any deficiency in the physical qualities of the Irishman-it being an established fact that he is capable of performing far more labor than the Englishman, the Frenchman, or the Belgian. Not to a deficiency of intellectual ability-Ireland having given to England her most distinguished soldiers and statesmen; and having throughout the world furnished evidence that the Irishman is capable of the highest intellectual improvement. Nevertheless, while possessed of every natural advantage, he is, at home, a slave to the severest taskmasters, and in a condition of poverty and distress such as is exhibited in no other portion of the civilized world. No choice being left him but between expatriation and starvation, we see him, everywhere, abandoning the * London Times. home of his fathers, to seek elsewhere that subsistence which Ire land-rich as she is in soil and in her minerals, in her navigable rivers, and in her facilities for communication with the world—can no longer afford him. The value of land and labor being altogether dependent upon the power to maintain commerce-and that power having no existence in Ireland - the reader can now have little difficulty in understanding why both are there, as well as in Turkey, Portugal, and Jamaica, so nearly valueless. Neither can be utilized, because of the enormous extent to which they are subjected to that heaviest of all taxes - the one resulting from a necessity for dependence on ships, wagons, and all other of the machinery of trade and transportation. In his recent work on Ireland, Captain Head speaks of a property containing 10,000 acres, that had been purchased at five cents an acre; and in a paper read before the Statistical Section of the British Association, it was shown that the estates then purchased in Ireland, by English capital, embraced 403,065 acres; the purchase-money had been £1,095,000, or about £2 15s. ($13 20) per acre being little more than is paid for farms, with very moderate improvements, in the new States of the Mississippi Valley. The sugar of the laborer of Jamaica exchanges in Manchester for three shillings, of which he receives perhaps one; and he perishes because of the difficulty of obtaining clothing, or the machinery by help of which to make it. The Hindoo sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back, in the form of cloth, at eighteen or twenty pence. The Virginia negro raises tobacco that exchanges for six shillings' worth of commodities, of which he and his owner obtain threepence — all the difference being absorbed by the various persons who live by trade, and stand in the way of commerce. The Irishman raises chickens which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives pence; and thus sugar that has yielded the free negro of Jamaica a penny, commands in the west of Ireland a pair of chickens, or a dozen lobsters. * Having studied these facts, the reader will be at no loss * The enormous loss incident to the wide separation of the consumer from the producer, is thus exhibited by Captain Head: Chickuns are about 5d. a couple-dooks, 10d. A couple of young gaise, 10d.; when auld, not less than 1s. or 14d.' "And turkeys?' I asked. to understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labor resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the doctrines of Adam Smith, to take their places by each other's side. More than seventy years since, that great man denounced the system which looked to compelling the exports of raw produce, as one productive of infinite injustice; and, certainly, the histories of Jamaica and Virginia, Ireland and India, since his time, would afford him, were he now present, little reason for changing the opinions then expressed. § 4. It is usual to ascribe the state of things now existing in Ireland to the rapid growth of population-that in its turn being charged to the account of the potato, the excessive use of which, as Mr. McCulloch informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living, and tended to the multiplication of men, women, and children. "The peasantry of Ireland live," as he says, “in miserable mud cabins, without either a window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture," and are distinguished from their fellow-laborers across the Channel by their "filth and misery;" and hence, in his opinion, it is that they work for low wages. * We have here effect substituted for cause. The absence of demand for labor causes wages to be so low, that the laborer can obtain nothing but mud cabins and potatoes. It is admitted everywhere throughout the continent of Europe, that the introduction of the potato has tended greatly to the improvement of the condition of the people; but then, there is no portion of the continent in which it constitutes an essential part of the national policy to deprive millions of people of all mode of employment except agriculture—thus placing those millions at such a distance from market, that the chief part of their labor and its products is lost in the effort to reach it; and that their land is exhausted because "I can't say; we haven't many of thim in the counthry, and I don't want to tell yere Arn'r a lie. Fish, little or nothing. A large turbot, of 30 pounds weight, for 3s. Lobsters, a dozen for 4d. Soles, 2d. or 3d. a-piece. T'other day I bought a turbot, of 15 pounds weight, for a gentleman, and I paid 18d. for ut.""- Walks and Talks in Ireland, p. 178. "What do you pay for your tea and sugar here?' I inquired. "Very dare, sir,' he replied. We pay 5s. for tea, 5d. for brown sugar, and 8d. for white; that is, if we buy a single pound." - Ibid, p. 187. * Treatise on Wages, p. 33. of the impossibility of returning to the soil any of the elements of which its crops are composed. Trading centralization produces all these effects. It looks to the destruction of the value of labor and land, and to the enslavement of man. It tends to the division of the whole population into two classes, separated by an impassable gulf-the mere laborer and the land-owner. It tends to the destruction of the power of association for any purpose of improvement, whether by the making of roads or the founding of schools; and, of course, to the prevention of the growth of towns, as we see to have been the case with Jamaica, so barbarous in this respect when compared with Martinique or Cuba-islands whose governments have not looked to the perpetual divorce of the artisan and the agriculturist. The decay of towns in Ireland, subsequent to the Union, led to absenteeism, and thus added to the exhaustion of the land-Irish wheat being now needed to pay not only for English cloth, but for English services; and the more the centralization resulting from absenteeism, the greater, necessarily, was the difficulty attendant upon the maintenance of the productive powers of the soil. Mr. McCulloch, however, assures his readers, that "it is not easy to imagine any grounds for pronouncing the expenditure of the rent at home more beneficial" to the country than if it had been expended abroad.* By another distinguished political economist we are told that "Many persons" are "perplexed by the consideration that all the commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee's income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. This is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition, destroyed, without producing any return."† 'The view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total destruction of the commodities consumed. Were it even correct, it would still follow that there had been transferred from Ireland to England a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a rise in the price of labor in the one and a fall * Principles of Political Economy, p. 157. in the other; but if it were altogether incorrect, it would ther follow, necessarily, that the loss to the country would be as great as if the remittances were a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea." That the latter is the case the reader may readily convince himself. Man consumes much, but he destroys nothing. In eating food, he is merely acting as a machine for preparing the elements of which it is composed, for future production; and the more he can take out of the land, the more he can return to it, and the more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the soil. If the market is near, he takes hundreds of bushels of turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land— varying the character of his culture from year to year; and the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it, the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more readily he can command improved machinery, by aid of which to obtain still increased returns. If, however, the market is distant, he must raise only those things that will bear carriage, and thus is he limited in his cultivation; and the more he is limited the more rapidly does he exhaust his land, the less is his power to obtain roads, to have association with his fellow-men, to obtain books, to improve his mode of thought, to purchase machinery, or to make roads. Such is the case even when he is compelled to sell and buy in distant markets; but still worse is it when, as in the case of rents paid to an absentee, nothing is returned to the land. Production then diminishes without a corresponding diminution of the rent the poor laborer being daily more and more thrown upon the mercy of the landlord, or his agent, and becoming more and more subjected to his will. The proportion of rent then rises, but its quantity declines. The value of commodities increases, but that of man diminishes-and with every step in this direction we witness a growing tendency to depopulation, such as has been exhibited in Turkey, Portugal, Jamaica, and especially in Ireland. We are told of the principle of population, in virtue of which men increase faster than food; and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are pointed to the fact, that, when men are few in number, they always cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant; but, that, as population increases, they are forced |