debts. I should see no harm, if produce upon the thousand acres no man were able to alienate such a larger quantity of food. This last assertion I believe not to be true. A thousand acres, in the hands of twenty farmers, stead of one, and twenty gardens, and twenty pair of women's eyes to look after poultry, pigs and bees, More.corn would be grown by the lands by will. I have a great objection to that which keeps things in a state never fixed. But, there is a great difference gives you twenty farm-yards inbetween a gradation in the size of estates, and all large ones or all small ones. And, there is also a great difference between ownerships and between renterships. single farmer; but not a twentieth There is no harm can arise from part, perhaps, of the quantity of a due proportion of small farms. the articles which I have just menIt is not here as in the case of tioned, which are the produce, in a ownerships; for, if you divide a very large proportion, not so much thousand acres into twenty farms, of labour or of money, as they there is still but one owner of the are of mere care. There would be thousand acres, and the protection besides twenty patches of hemp of the woods, the securing of the or of flax; twenty, or, more likely, repairs, the keeping up of the forty spinning-wheels, or knittingfences and of the roads, all still needles at work. But, Gentlemen, belong to that one owner. It is are the people nothing? Take so manifest, that twenty families these nineteen families of small upon this estate would be better farmers, make their men and boys off than if they were all labourers the labourers of the great farmer, but one family; it is so manifest cram the nineteen families into that these twenty families would beggarly houses on the outskirts be worth more to the state than of a village or a town, take away nineteen families of labourers and every thing in which they prided one family of big farming people. themselves, and, in place of nineThis is so manifest, that one is teen decent and moral families, anxious to hear a reason on the you have a great and loathsome other side. You furnish us with mass of unprincipled and shamethe old reason; that, by bringing less paupers. That which before all the means of the twenty into went to make the lives of these the hands of one, you enable him nineteen families pleasant, will to go a better way to work, and to make the big farmer rich, and make the estate a more simple and convenient funnet of taxation; but the change will be productive of misery to ninety-five persons out of the hundred, reckoning each family at five persons. We have no positive proof, that the moulding of large farms into small ones has produced the misery now prevalent amongst the labourers in England. But, we have these two facts before us, that, during the last fifty years, or thereabouts, and especially during the last thirty, the small farms have been melting away; and we have this other fact, that, during the whole of that time, the lot of the labouring classes has been growing worse and worse; till, at last, the Parliament itself tells us that the state of the once decent and happy English labourer, is now that of misery and degradation in the extreme. Other causes have, doubtless, contributed largely towards this fatal event; but, in the face of these undeniable facts, it seems a little too much, pertinaciously to preach up that small farms are productive of misery to the people. But, we have not yet looked at one of your consequences of the division of the land into small occupations. I am yet to learn what harm there can be in this conse quence, suppose it to be such. It appears to me monstrous to lament an increase in the numbers of the people, as long as mouths never come without hands, and as long as the land is as yet in a state but of half cultivation. However, to deduce such a consequence from a subdivision of the land, adds another to the contradictions put forth by the same set of politicians upon the same subject. The people of Great Britain are said to have swelled up from ten millions to fourteen millions during twenty years. It is notorious, that during this increase of population, there has been a diminution in the degree of four or five to one in the number of farms. It has been the practice of great estate holders everywhere to run out the little life holders. Here a numerous class of proprietors have been swept away. The farms have been moulded nine or ten into one. The cottagers on the skirts of commons have been swept by thousands upon thousands from their little bits of land; and, all this time, the population has been going on increasing most prodigiously; marvellous and miraculous; while (oh! wonderous principle of populatlon!) in the neighbouring kingdom of France, which is only just across the ..channel, you tell your readers, express approbation of superior that in twenty years the population has increased from twenty-eight authority) entered upon a pro fession for which they were fully millions to thirty millions; "and" qualified. The Lords of the Treasury, therefore, have taken the order into further consideration, and have decided, as the "justice of the case required, that "no half-pay shall be issued sub "that this increase could not pos"sibly have taken place but for "the DIVISION OF THE “LAND CAUSED BY THE "REVOLUTION"! I am, Gentlemen, Your most obedient, and Most humble Servant,th after enter into holy orders; but "that the measure shall not be retrospectivel" ld quod bus Isequently to the 25th of Dec. next, to officers who may hère WM. COBBETT. SS THE THING.**** dog This is a perfect jewel. In the Sefirst place, the orders of the Lords Dof the Treasury are, it seems, Sequal to lanes. Ah! to be sure they rare; and they are better, as they 1 copy the following paragraph cost us less money. As to the "full from the Winchester Paper. It qualifications" of the sons and characterizes the THING in a nephews and brothers and cousins most surprisingly striking manner. of the Lord Charleses, as to their “In June last an order was circu-“ full qualifications" for the lated, suspending the issuing of "half-pay to officers in the army, “who had taken holy orders. It “was immediately afterwards per Holy Orders," after casting off the whiskers and blue and buff, who can doubt that, when, as we have seen at Skibbereen, that tithes "ceived, that if this order were to are sometimes collected by force "have a retrospective effect, it “have of arms!" effect, it of arms!T Verylit sej f "would operate with great hard-But, there is a little hitch for "ship, and indeed with injustice, the T&H IN G, after all, 19 The "on individuals who had acted on THING says, if this paragraph "the faith of existing regulations, speaks truth, that the half-pay is "which regarded the half-pay as given ass as compensation for "a compensation of past services, past services."What a doubleand had (some of them with the " 9 dealing THING thou art! For, M "harbour yesterday, which caused now be in the service of an Em"considerable alarm amongst the peror, and employed in subjugating Republican party, who were the people to his control; or, in under arms the greater part of other words, for that is the real oblast night, in expectation of his jeet, employed in assisting the son Lordship landing forces to take of the king of Portugal to bring "possession of the forts. He has the Brazillian territory back uncommunicated to the different der the sway of his most faithful "Consuls that, by order of his Majesty! Imperial Majesty, he will pro 7 means However, let it be so. Nay, ceed to destroy the port by let his Lordship be" E. MARAN"sinking vessels loaded with HAO,' which, it seems, stones at the different entrances; Marquis, or some other cursed but we cannot suppose he will foolish thing, of this Maranhao. "be guilty of such an act of Let him do, or let him be, what "madness. He has ordered the he may, so that I have not the “ packet that arrived from Fal-mortification to see him put on OTHING, "mouth last night to proceed this again the livery of the "afternoon, and after to-day, no as it was, a little while ago, notivessel to enter or leave the port. fied in the papers he was about to "We have some hopes of seeing do. "a speedy termination to the "troubles of the province, as we "are informed he landed troops "to the southward or northward, "we cannot ascertain which. In "business, nothing whatever doding, &c. &c." 1 I have no doubt but the patriots," who are so eager sell their country to the Jews in London, that the former may be able to pocket the proceeds; I have no doubt but these unprincipled plunderers, who cherish "liberty as the cursed caterpillars are cherishing my cabbages; I have no I doubt but they have behaved very ungratefully and dishonestly towards LORD COCHRANE. So that, Iam by no means disposed to blame him for doing what he is now said to be doing. Besides, I have a firm reliance on his honour and justice. Now, mind, reader, I do not think it safe for you to believe one single word of all this. If it were true, it would certainly be a curious turn of things, that his Lordship should go out to fight for the independence of the people of South America, and that he should And, at any rate, E. Maranhao,”? M or E. Devil: any thing but see the head of soldiers, to compel his him again in the Livery of the flock to give him money or goods! " THE" Church of England," as" Galway Bible Society was conit is called, has, from its very be-"vened in the Court-house of ginning, been supported, in a great" that town, upon which occasion measure, by force of arms; but," his Grace the Archbishop of that branch of it which exists in "Tuam had signified his assent Ireland, openly and at all times" to the wishes of the Society, by seems to rely greatly on this spe-" taking the Chair. On the arri cies of support. When Christ" val of his Grace and the Comtold the Apostle to put up his "mittee, it was found that the sword, when he so strictly forbade" place of meeting had been all fighting, his Apostles could taken possession of by a crew of scarcely have anticipated a Church" ruffians, while bands of misof Christ, the Clergy of which creants, armed with clubs, beset would collect their tithes by the every avenue. It was with great means of armed men, Never" difficulty the Reverend Prelate could they have dreamed of battles" himself succeeded in penetratlike that of SKIBBEREEN!" ing to the Chair, and a number Never could they have imagined, of the friends of the Institution that a minister of the Gospel of" who had contemplated taking the meek and merciful Jesus" "part in the proceedings, were would be seen sallying forth at " altogether excluded. Notwith " |