Their principle, is patriotie and their design judicious: lands, as they are reclaimed and put in heart by their exertions, will be again offered to the competition of the public, who will thus derive the same advantage in the investment of capital in agriculture, as they do from the introduction of a superior article in any of the other markets.

If any reader be sceptical, we can only repeat, we have as good land as the British; we can afford to till it better; we ought therefore to have at least as good a crop. But we have not half so good a crop in proportion to our capabilities; we therefore look to double our annual produce at least before we rest satisfied. How the improvement is to take place is another subject of important speculation. In the first place, any one looking at the face of the country must see that immense quantities of arable land lie unproductive in the nooks and corners of our misshapen enclosures; that the soil lost in ragged head-ridges, gripes, and bohereens is very considerable; that thousands of acres of wet and rushy bottoms might easily be made productive meadow land; and that almost universally a vast improvement has still to take place in all our implements of husbandry. Next, the intelligent observer must be struck with the want of proper roads for the transport of manure and produce, but particularly with the inaccessible condition of thousands of noble limestone quarries, which only wait a practicable avenue through which to pour fertility_over whole parishes and baronies. Then, when our fences are reduced to convenient forms-when all the available surface of the land is cleared and drained, and made accessible-when our mines of manure are opened up, aud all our mechanical aids of labour

ready to be put in operation-the question of the most profitable rotation of crops, and the best description of seeds, will still remain to exercise the ingenuity of the farmer. We have now surely made out a sufficient case of improvements to be looked for, to justify our speculation on the possibility of obtaining an additional produce from the arable land of the island; and will next proceed to consider, how far the bog lands of Ireland invite the attention of the capitalist.

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The waste lands of Ireland are esti mated by Mr. Griffith at 5,340,736 acrest of these it is estimated by the commissioners for reporting on the bogs of Ireland, that 2,830,000 acres are bog, either flat or mountain, and all reclaimable at a greater or a less expense. In estimating the expense of these reclamations, the engineers employed by the commissioners took into account the expense only of the main drainages which would be required to make the land fit to receive its first crop of potatoes, and these expenses they estimated at under £2 per acre in all cases, and at so low as £1 10s. per acre in many cases. But however intelligent this scientific class of men might be, it is now certain that they considerably underrated the expense which must be incurred before bog lands can be rendered fit for the reception of any crop. It is true that the experimental improvements which have since taken place, and which seem so decidedly to contradict these original estimates, have been conducted on a scale not sufficiently extensive to give full fair play to the capital embarked still where we find Mr. Fetherstone, whose operations are conducted on a considerable scale and in the best manner, unable to reclaim bog lands under an expense of £8 per acre, and Lord Palmerston expending

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as much as £25 per acre on bog-lands on his estate, (Report on the state of Agriculture, 1836, Mr. Clarke's evidence,) we cannot see reason to expect that any amount of capital or extent of operations would enable us to reclaim our bogs at so low a rate as was hoped for at the time of the original estimates. It is, however, in evidence before the committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the condition of the Irish poor in 1830, that bog land in the county of Sligo has been reclaimed and rendered worth a rent of 30s. per acre per annum, at an expense of about £7 an acre; or, if retained in the hands of the proprietor, that it would repay all expenses by three years' produce, leaving all subsequent returns clear gain. (Report of Committee.) Let us, however, say £10 an acre for purchase and improve ments, and if the land be made worth 30s. an acre yearly rent by the expenditure, it is clear that a large profit is still to be realized on even our wastes and bogs. That the improvement of land already arable is the better speculation at present, we believe there is no doubt. Mr. Griffith and Mr. Weale concur in the opinion that the same capital and skill might be applied to the old enclosures and the hilly ground with a much greater certainty of profit to the proprietors, and of commensurate advantage to the tenantry than if expended on a speculative project of reclaiming bogs. (See Papers on the Experimental Improvements at King William's-town, 1834.)

We now proceed to state the case of manufactures, and have no doubt that we shall be able to show sufficient inducement to men of capital to entitle us to their most serious attention.

The subjects of most interest to the manufacturer, whom we will suppose secure of a market, are Power, Hands, and Raw Material, the last involving facility of access. Power we possess from two sources, water and fuel. Our water power has never been calcudated it is in fact so great as almost to defy calculation. There is no country in the world where waterpowers and navigable levels are so

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combined in traverses it.

almost anv river that The rivers of England and Lowland Scotland are slow and navigable, but it is a fictitious power that turns the machinery upon their banks; the rivers of Highland Scotland are unnavigable torrents, possessing immense water power it is true, but wasting it in the midst of sterility.The chief rivers of Ireland, on the other hand, as they flow through a rich corn-bearing country, afford by their gradual descent a prolonged succession of water-powers to grind the grain that grows upon their banks, or to turn to various manufactures the raw material that their navigable levels float upwards from the sea. The Suir, while it converts to flour the produce of the rich plains of Tipperary, brings up the cotton which it turns to thread in the spinning-mills upon its banks, and afterwards bears down both manufactured articles to be exported to Liverpool or London, from the quay of Waterford. It needs but a little further investment of capital, and the same might be said of the Barrow, the Boyne, the Blackwater, the Slaney, the Suck, the Bann, the Maig, the Fergus, the Lee, and the Liffey-all more or less navigable, and all abounding in water power. But what shall we say of the Shannon, navigable from source to mouth, a distance of 240 miles, and possessing one concentrated waterpower at Castleconnell, able to drive more than four times all the machinery now worked by all the steam-engines of Glasgow ? And we have but touched upon river power: every feeder of every river enumerated, every minor river and each of its feeders is equal to horse powers unnumbered. Nor have we yet enumerated the waterpowers of our lakes. The surplus waters of Loch Erne alone would drive half the millwheels in Ulster. Loch Conn pours through the Moy a waterpower equal to all the steam-engines of Belfast. Loch Corrib, Loch Mask, and Loch Carra, may be looked on as one great mill-dam, covering 64,000 acres of ground-the whole waters of which descend from 64 to 14 feet to the sea at Galway. Loch Beltra is another natural mill-dam, 1000 acres in extent,

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with a catch-water basin of 50 square miles, and a fall of 40 feet into Clew Bay at Newport. Loch Ina, and the Lochs of Ballinahinch send their united waters into the bay of Briterbuy, with the force of thousands of horse powers. The lakes of Westmeath pour a slower stream, but a greater body of water, and perhaps an equal power through the Inny to the Shannon. The discharge of Loch Teroig, Loch Graney, and Loch O'Grady, all seated high in the Slieve Baughta mountains --is an unestimated force that daily runs to waste in the bay of Scariff. The overflow of the Lakes of Killarney eries out for occupation from all the rocks that line the channel of the Laune, while from the remoter recesses of Iveragh and Dunkerron, streams pouring from mountain lochs unnumbered clamour for wheels to drive as they descend unnoticed to the sea. The enumeration is not half complete the lakes of Donegal, of Leitrim, of Sligo, and Roscommon national treasures in any less favoured land-are still behind. But space compels us, and the fear that we have already dwelt too long on a subject which ought to be known to every man acquainted with the commonest map of the country, reconciles us to leave this section without farther illustration.

With respect to fuel or steam power we are not so rich; still we can show sufficient cause for the prevalence of the impression that we are, so far as fuel is concerned, decidedly poor, as well as for a cheering expectation that proper measures can at any time develop very great local resources in this essential material of national wealth. The coal fields of Ireland differ from those of Great Britain in quality and in situation. The fuel produced in Britain is bright coal that raised in Ireland is in great part anthracite or blind coal; the localities in which the coal measures lie in Great Britainare chiefly on the sea-coast -but in Ireland they are, with the single exception of the Ballycastle colliery, all inland. Here, then, are two great inducements to prosecute the working of coal-mines in Great Britain in preference to those on this side of the channel-general superiority of produce for the domestic uses of life, and facility of transport. But this superiority in quality extends no farther than the domestic uses of fuel. In the generation of steam, blind coal is an equally efficient agent ; and in smelting

and kiln-drying it is much superior. Why then have the great beds of blind coal with which Ireland abounds not been worked to a greater extent? The answer is plain-because they are, comparatively speaking, inaccessible. The Leinster district, which is in point of present access much the most favoured, lies at a distance of sixty miles from the capital on one side, and is separated from the southern market by a lofty range of mountains on the other: the district, it is true, abuts pretty nearly on the Barrow; but hitherto no profitable workings have been obtained near enough to that navigation to make the water transit available for the produce; for as to constructing a railway from the mouth of the river to the nearest means of carriage, that is an undertaking altogether out of the sphere of Irish speculation. The seams of coal, besides, lie deep, and what with the expense of working, and the length of overland carriage on carts, it is no wonder that expectations of national benefit from the Castlecomer and Killenaule coal country have hitherto been anything but sanguine with the public. The Munster district again lies in the very heart of the country described as so inaccessible in a former portion of this paper: the Blackwater, which runs through part of it, is not there navigable; and to carry the coal across the Boggra mountains to Cork, or over the range of Slievemish to Tralee, or through the wilds of Newmarket to Limerick, would be a work so expensive as to cut up all remuneration. The remaining portions of the district lying chiefly in Clare, are even more out of the way. It costs 12s. 6d. per ton to convey goods overland from Ennis to Limerick the expense would be nearly doubled in transporting coal from the remoter districts of Moyferta and Burrin-the ill success of the Munster collieries is therefore not to be wondered at. We have said that the coal of Ireland is in great part of the blind quality. All the coal south of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway is of this description; the coal north of the same line is chiefly bituminous, and the quality is generally of a medium between the quick blazing coal of Scotland, and the caking coal of Whitehaven. "On the whole," says Mr. Griffith, "a very good coal for culinary and manufacturing purposes."-Report on Survey and Valuation of Ireland, 1824.

The chief deposit of this coal, which