Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question The general system, however, of English cultivation, afi'ording no experience to render the nature and operation of peasant properties familiar, and Englishmen being in general profoundly ignorant of the agricultural economy of other countries, the very idea of peasant proprietors is strange to the English mind, and does not easily find access to it. Even the forms of language stand in the way: the familiar designation for owners of land being landlords, a term to which tenants is always understood as a correlative. When, at the time of the famine, the suggestion of peasant proper ties as a means of Irish improvement found its way into parliamen tary and newspaper discussions, there were writers of pretension to whom the word proprietor was so far from conveying any dis tinct idea, that they mistook the small holdings of Irish cottier tenants for peasant properties. The subject being so little under stood, I think it important, before entering into the theory of it, to do something towards showing how the case stands as to matter of fact; by exhibiting, at greater length than would otherwise be ad missible, some of the testimony which exists respecting the state of cultivation, and the comfort and happiness of the cultivators, in those countries and parts of countries, in which the greater part of the land has neither landlord nor farmer, other than the labourer who tills the soil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.