* prohibition of entail, reform of the law of intestate succession, the transfer of land by simple registration at the least possible cost, security of tenure, the sale of absentee estates to the tenants, or in towns to trustees for the citizens, are measures even more necessary for manufactures and commerce than for agriculture in a country in such a condition as Ireland's; measures, too, in favour of the town, are measures in favour of the country. 'If 'If you wish to encourage agriculture, develope manufactures and commerce which multiply consumers; improve the means of communication which bring consumers and producers nearer to each other. The agricultural question is nothing else than one of general prosperity.' + Mere reformation, however, of the laws relating to land, trusting to the gradual operation of wise and just institutions in the future, is by no means sufficient now, either for the general prosperity of Ireland or for that of its agriculture in particular. The legislature has not only noxious and barbarous laws, but also their effects, both economical and political, to remove. On a population cut off from manufactures and commerce, a land system has been imposed, carefully contrived to exclude As an example of the close connection of the reforms needed in the Irish land system, it is worth observing that to give the force of law to the Ulster custom of tenant-right will be a positive injury to many tenants, without a simple law of transfer and succession; since the interest of the tenants will otherwise become subject at once to the costs and risks on account of which they have invested their capital in the purchase of a customary right instead of in the purchase of land. The Landed Estates Court, it may be added, is not a poor man's court, and is a very costly and tedious court even for a rich man. Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland.' By M. de Lavergne. them from property in the soil, and even from the secure cultivation of the small farms to which they were driven for subsistence. In France, Germany, and Belgium, landed property is a national institution, and a national benefit, and the nation is for it; in Ireland it has been, both in origin and in effect, a hostile institution, and the nation is against it. Yet the very causes which have produced this unnatural situation have concealed themselves in the violence of their own effects; and the system of tenure has appeared the only great evil, because it has been almost the only career open to the nation; proprietorship having been altogether denied to it. The system of property, an oligarchic and feudal system of property, is the radical evil, of which the system of tenure is only a single branch. The great aim of Parliament ought to be to diffuse property in land widely throughout the nation ; treating all immediate cost incurred for that end in compensating existing proprietors as incurred, not only for the improvement of Ireland, but also for the security of the Empire. The provisions of the Irish Land Bill now before Parliament need much amendment for the protection of tenants. But the success of any law of tenure, however well framed in itself, will mainly depend on the number of proprietors the conditions of purchase and reforms in the law of property shall call into being. 85 POLITICAL ECONOMY AND EMIGRATION.* THANKS to four or five great writers in a century, a few statesmen, and the particular interests and accidents which led to a comparatively early adoption of free trade, England is looked up to on the Continent as par excellence the country of political economy. In few other countries nevertheless is this branch of political philosophy less carefully or commonly studied, however commonly its terms are in use; and it becomes daily more evident that the air ought to be cleared of clouds of confusion enveloping those very terms. For instead of facilitating thought, as the terms of a science should do, they have come to supersede it; they are taken to settle several problems about which economic inquiry is almost in its infancy; and, what is yet more misleading, they have caused different and even opposite things to be confounded under one name—as has been the case not only with several economic terms commonly made use of in discussing emigration, but with emigration itself. In no other branch of philosophy indeed, unless metaphysics itself, does the ancient mist of realism continue so to darken counsel by words without * Reprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' May 1868. knowledge.' A resemblance has been seen by a philosopher in a number of different things viewed in one particular light, and a common name has been given to them with reference only to that point of resemblance; often indeed the general term introduced in this way was not originally meant to denote a complete induction, but simply to put a conspicuous part for the whole, leaving something to human intelligence; presently, however, the entire class comes to assume a perfect identity in the minds of some of the philosopher's most intelligent followers. In like manner, a phrase used at first to signify merely a tendency of things under particular conditions comes to stand for a universal law or principle of nature, and a generalisation, which originally threw a new light upon phenomena, finally involves them in almost impenetrable obscurity. Emigration, for example, though really a name for several different kinds of emigration, and, in particular, for two opposite kinds on which we shall have particularly to dwell, has been spoken of as a thing, the beneficial effects of which, in every case, have an à priori certainty that leaves no room for discussion. It is all supply and demand, one person will tell you; labour, whether it be English labour or Irish labour, is a commodity which finds its way to the best market. Another, arriving by a somewhat less mechanical process at the same positive conclusion, tells you that it must be beneficial, since it takes place through the operation of the private interest of all the parties concerned-the term 'private interest,' it will be observed, being in all such reasoning confounded 6 with another deceitful abstraction, the desire of wealth.' A third argues that it must of necessity raise the rate of wages, by distributing the 'aggregate wages fund' among a smaller number of labourers. That the rate of wages is not determined by any single law or set of conditions, we hope to demonstrate in a subsequent article.* At present it is enough to remark, in the first place, that there are no funds necessarily destined to employment as wages; and coincidently with a vast emigration there may be, as its very result or as the result of a common cause, a substitution of pasture for tillage, and a withdrawal of capital from farming, with a diminished demand for labour in consequence. Moreover, the aggregate amount of the funds expendible as wages does not, given the number of labourers, determine the rate of wages at all. If a single employer, or a few who could combine, had the entire amount, all the labour in the country which could not emigrate might be hired for its bare subsistence, whatever the rate in the power of the employer to give. Again, if the whole amount were, as it really is, very unequally shared among employers, the price of labour might be immeasurably lower than if it were equally shared; just as at an auction, the prices paid for things will probably be immensely higher if the purchasers have equal means, than if most of the money is in the hands. of a few. If two bidders, for example, have each 50%., one of them may have to spend his whole fifty to get half what he wants; but if one of them has but 57. See Appendix. 'Political Economy and the Rate of Wages.' |