another rebellion, suppressed in its turn in such a manner that Sir William Petty in 1672 expressed his conviction that the Irish never would rebel again, the more so, as they had never before such prosperity as then.* Political wisdom and sagacity are both supposed to have made great progress since the reign of Charles II., yet such has been the falsification of repeated hopes of Ireland's reformation that there are still to be found men who repeat the very wishes (doubtless ignorant of their antiquity) which Sir William Petty 200 years ago sternly rebuked, and of which nearly 300 years. ago the poet Spenser exposed the folly. The repetition of such sentiments in itself might merely prove that political and moral progress has been unequal in England as in Ireland, and be worth notice only on the part of those historic minds who find an interest in every living vestige of ancestral barbarism in either island. But it is connected not remotely with inquiries of more practical interest and importance, to which conflicting answers are returned; inquiries such as, What is really the present state of Ireland? Has it made any real progress since its last great disaster? Is the land, the people, or the law, the cause of its

* 'Political Anatomy of Ireland,' chaps. iv. and xii.

Some furious spirits have wished that the Irish would rebel again, that they might be put to the sword. But I declare that notion to be not only impious and inhuman, but withal frivolous, and pernicious even to those who have rashly wished for those occasions.'-Sir W. Petty, 'Political Anatomy,' chap. iv. So have I heard it often wished that all that land were a seapool, which kind of speech is rather the manner of desperate men than of wise counsellors; for were it not the part of a desperate physician to wish his patient dead rather than to apply the best endeavour of his skill for his recovery ? '—'A New View of the State of Ireland,' by Edmund Spenser, 1596.

long backwardness and misery? Can legislation do anything for its benefit?

The chief difficulty in answering the two first of these inquiries arises from the very different state of different parts of the island. Different counties and towns-adjoining estates, and even adjoining farms and houses are very differently circumstanced, and would return a very different report; nor is it too much to assert that the man does not exist who could give a complete and true account of Ireland's present condition. Even the very same results may be produced in different places by opposite causes, and are of different import and omen accordingly. Of this a striking instance offers at once in the rate of wages; an instance of great importance in itself, because it touches the root of the whole Irish question, as for brevity it is sometimes called. Great stress is laid by some on the advance in Irish wages as a proof of a proportionate increase in general prosperity, and of the benefit of emigration. As a matter of fact, the rise wages is much less than those who take this view suppose; and, in truth, the bulk of the employers of labour below the landed proprietors are in no condition to pay such a price for it. The demand at such a price as has been stated could in most Irish counties be that of one small class alone; and such wages would therefore imply a much greater emigration of labourers and disappearance of farmers than has as yet taken place. But, moreover, those who allege a rise in wages as a conclusive proof of a proportionate increase in general prosperity, overlook the distinction between a

in

home demand for labour and a foreign one, to which alone they refer it. If ten thousand labourers only were left in the island, they might earn perhaps more than a pound a day from the upper ten, thousand; but would such payment be a proof of Ireland's great prosperity? Would it not rather prove that Ireland had lost one of the three great instruments of production, labour; and that the industry of Ireland had gone develop American instead of Irish natural resources? The following table shows the rates of wages earned by agricultural labour throughout the year just closed in different parts of the island, as ascertained by personal inquiry

to

From the foregoing table it appears that wages throughout most of Ireland do not average more than a shilling daily throughout the working year, which, though a great improvement upon former

Even such rates as the above are not maintained in all the districts remote from railways: occasional wages of 2s. 6d. a day in the West are far from being a sign of agricultural prosperity and a permanent demand for labour. In parts of Mayo, for example, where oats and potatoes are commonly grown in alternation until the land is exhausted, there is a great demand for labour at spring-time and harvest (when wages sometimes reach 2s. 6d. a day) and very little demand through the rest of the year.

rates when constancy of employment is considered, is yet at present prices a low rate, and one which threatens or promises, as people may think it, a great additional emigration, if the home demand for labour be not greatly improved. And, in connection with this, it is an important point to notice that wages are highest in the localities where population, in place of decreasing, has increased--a point illustrative of the distinction between a home demand for labour and a foreign one. When wages rise by reason of the amount of profitable employment, the quantity and brisk circulation of capital, the wealth and consumption of large classes within a country, it is not only an advantage to the labourers, but a sign of general affluence; it is otherwise when it means no more than that labourers have disappeared. Happily it means the former in at least one-half of Ulster. In that vast system of manufactures which now stretches over several countries, it is around towns in which population has doubled in half a generation that agricultural wages are highest. This circumstance deserves the more attention since it has been lately persistently alleged that the want of coal and iron is the cause of Ireland's poverty, and a cause which must keep it always poor. Writers who persist in such statements can surely never have heard of Derry, Coleraine, Ballymena, Antrim, Newtownards, Lisburn, Banbridge, Newry, Armagh, Strabane, and many other manufacturing towns of Ulster, besides Belfast, to say nothing of the numerous factories which stud the rural districts of the provinces, or of the great amount of

industry engaged in the domestic manufacture of the finer fabrics, which the power-loom cannot for many years compete with. Much of the wealth and usefulness of Belfast itself arises from the fact that it is the commercial centre of several counties; and were it overthrown by an earthquake to-morrow, the United Kingdom would have lost one of its best cities, but the looms of Ulster would remain numerous and busy. That the natural deficiency of coal and iron is not the chief obstacle to Irish wealth is indeed sufficiently established by the fact, that in Belfast manufactures in iron are successfully carried on. A fact of still greater significance is that Belfast has in one generation sprung to its present importance, through the land on which it stands becoming the property of its citizens, from being the property of a single proprietor hampered by settlements and incumbrances, and by no means brought up to industry. This is a fact which in itself might justify a presumption that the want of other than agricultural employment for labour in Ireland, and the consequent rush to a foreign demand, is due to no faults of the people or the island, but to the law.

A noble writer has recently described with graphic eloquence the long series of restrictions laid on almost every branch of Irish trade and industry by English legislation in less enlightened times than our own; and the importance due to such historical causes is proved by the different history of two Irish industries -the linen and the woollen manufactures. Almost at the same moment that Protestant manufacturers were flying from France on the Revocation of the Edict of