Paris or Versailles. Nor, on the other hand, would England be at all the richer if the entire kingdom of France were owned by resident British subjects, and its whole rental annually transmitted to and disbursed in this country, in addition to its own. These instances are, of course, meant to exhibit the subject in its utmost possible extent: there are, it is admitted, various degrees in which this evil prevails, according to which its consequences will be more or less obvious and important. A disease may be troublesome without being dangerous, or it may prostrate the strength without immediately threatening life, or it may become fatal at length, merely from its long continuation : just so is it with absenteeism; it may prevail to the extent it does in England, when only a certain number, twenty thousand, suppose, of our gentry, are dissipating their property abroad, in the vortex of French fashion, or the sties of Italian corruption; and these may not, perhaps, throw more than a hundred thousand English artisans out of employment, lowering the condition and, of course, raising the national burdens laid upon the rest; while in Ireland, perhaps, at least a fourth (the estimate has often been a third) of its landed rental is thus withdrawn; but, just as it prevails in any country, just so far is that country degraded and beggared.

(3.) Nor are the evils of absenteeism confined, as it respects Ireland, within its own shores. One of a great and increasing magnitude, as it regards this country, shall be here mentioned. Whether the absentee landlords reside in England, or, as is often the case, in other parts of Europe, still England is

the country to which the produce of Ireland has to be exported, to make up the rents of these absentees; occasioning not only great suffering to the people of that country, by abstracting more of the necessaries of life from them than can frequently be spared, and where larger portions of them ought always to be enjoyed, but great mischief in this, by inundating the markets of England with cattle, and, soon after the Union, with corn; and, consequently, inflicting on the little freeholders and farmers of England the most serious injury—a class of men which I again differ with the political economists in thinking ought to be upheld, for reasons I shall state hereafter. Waiving this consideration for the present, I shall point out a last evil as consequent on absenteeism, a loss of that which the class of writers against whom I am directing these remarks, the economists, ought fully to appreciate, for they are perpetually dwelling upon it, as though it were the sole consideration under the sun: I mean capital.

(4.) The capital of an entire country is created and accumulated by slow degrees, and in a course of years: and herein it differs most materially from those individual fortunes or capitals which are often rapidly obtained, and which are then too frequently merely the transfer of property from one person to another. But, in speaking on this point, a favourite subject in political economy, I shall not presume to offer a precise definition of the term capital, but merely state what I mean by it, namely, property accumulated beyond present consumption, and created principally, as Locke has observed, by labour. But

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how, nationally speaking, property can be progressively accumulated, when so little labour, comparatively speaking, is demanded, and when that little is so inadequately remunerated as scarcely to leave the bare means of existence, it would be difficult to imagine. That Ireland has lamentably little accumulated capital, nationally considered, is not any matter of surprise, but rather, how she can possibly supply the perpetual drains which are made upon her: the possibility is, it is true, demonstrated, she does supply them; and how, is seen too well, in the wretchedness of her people. As rational would it be for a farmer to dream of enriching his fields by carting off all their produce, and returning nothing to the ground; or a physician to restore his patient from an atrophy by starvation and depletion, as to suppose Ireland can accumulate capital while a long list of absentees are not only depriving her of all the means by which she might be enriched, but constantly wresting from her, in undue quantities, the very necessaries of existence. I leave it to modern writers, who dilate so much on the power of capital, to estimate the injury Ireland suffers from absenteeism, which has long deprived her of it, or the possibility of accumulating it.

(5.) Much is said about the great benefits which would accrue from the introduction of manufactures into the distressed parts of that country. "But if capitals sufficient to establish, or extend manufac tures, be not accumulated, which can scarcely be expected during the continuance of so great a drain of money; if the demand for labour do not keep pace

with the increase of people, which in such case it may not, if industry be overstocked; there will undoubtedly be reason to apprehend a recurrence of those disturbances which have already proved so injurious to Ireland'." Such is the opinion of Mr. Newenham on this important subject3.

(6.) To apply what has been said to the immediate subject of this treatise. It will be seen, from the preceding facts, and the necessary inferences drawn from them, that there is the strongest ground for asserting that Ireland, instead of negativing the theory of human increase advanced in this work, confirms it in all its main positions, in the most striking manner. It adds another irrefragable proof of the principle which lies at its foundation, the prolificness of a state of poverty and privation. Even in that important particular, in which it seems to deviate from what I conceive to be one of the effects of the law of population, by exhibiting a great increase of numbers without a corresponding amelioration of condition, it so differs as to confirm the general truth of that benevolent rule of

1 Newenham, An Inquiry into the Progress, &c. pp. 170, 171.

The introduction and extension of manufactures (a favourite proposition with some in behalf of Ireland) is, therefore, rendered impossible by absenteeship. It is difficult to imagine how they could be introduced and encouraged without either capital or demand, to both of which that evil is fatal. But even were it not so, it is not exactly the sort of remedy that a friend of the empire at large would wish to see applied, had he his choice. Unless the market for our fabrics could be very considerably extended, which does not seem very probable, the fabrics of Ireland would have to supplant those of England; in which case poverty and employment would only change hands. The "immense manufacture which Montesquieu refers, seems most adapted to the condition and wants of Ireland of all others; of which more hereafter.

to

3 Dr. Watkinson expressly attributes the fecundity of the Irish to this cause.-(Phil. Survey of the South of Ireland, p. 147.)

nature, constituting it one of those exceptions which prove its correctness.

I must repeat, therefore, in reference to that country, that when the population was not a fifth of its present number, all the evils now attributed to a surcharge of inhabitants existed, and even in a greater degree than they do at present; that, large as has been the increase of the inhabitants since that period, so far from the increase of its edible products having fallen short (which is the real consideration), the latter has very far surpassed the former; and that the want of employment generally, and of the wealth which labour generates, is plainly attributable to the constant subtraction of so vast a portion of the natural wealth of the country by absentees, who, far different to such a withdrawal upon mercantile principles, make no return whatsoever. Hence the desertion of those whose residence would create those avocations which diffuse wealth wherever they are pursued, keeps down the mass of the people in a state of the lowest poverty,—a state,

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repeat, the most favourable of all others to human prolificness. Were the wealth which mankind, under equal circumstances, always create in proportion to their numbers, allowed to remain in the country, employment would be created, and employment (to say nothing concerning its moral effects) would confer and diffuse affluence, and affluence would introduce those sedentary avocations, those comforts and indulgences approaching to luxury, and often terminating in it,-in fine, that general ease and enjoyment, the concomitants of riches, which are always diffused in a community, if fairly dealt with, in proportion to