It is a principle of political economy that the price of food is governed by the cost of producing it on the poorest lands, hence the effect on prices of the present system of impoverishment; for so long as the animal which eats turnips manures the wheatcrops, while the wheat-eating animals refuse to manure the turnips in return, agriculture will continue to be a costly struggle between thirty millions of sheep and thirty millions of men.

It has been suggested that there is a peculiar difficulty in the production of meat, and that the land is already doing full duty in that respect, but it is obvious that, if succulents and cereals are interchangeable as agricultural products, and if the land be farmed below its capabilities as regards the one, it must be so also as regards the other. Farmers hesitate to produce meat, except under favourable circumstances; and until the cereals feed the turnips, the extension of succulents can only lead to an increased demand for artificials.'

Hitherto the towns have been compelled to get rid of their waste for sanitary reasons, and they have done so by means of water and sewers. Probably another mode would have been cheaper and better for the purposes of agriculture, but whether we are to solve the problem which is to give the fields their due, by means of the earth method, or of a general scheme of irrigation, it is evident that the question is one of imperial interest, which cannot be adequately dealt with by local and isolated bodies, with very limited powers, and with no apprehension of any duty beyond that of getting rid of a nuisance. We are told that the sewers of the ancient capital of the world devoured the prosperity of the Roman peasant, and, having engulfed the wealth of the Campagna, and converted it into a sterile waste, attacked the rich stores of Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa. Gibbon estimated the population of Rome, when besieged by Alaric, A.D. 408, at 1,200,000. What a fertile stream must be poured into the Thames from the sewers of a city three times as populous! We learn from census reports that the English nation has assumed the character of a preponderating city population,' and that the towns of England and Wales contain a larger population than the whole country of 1801. The effects of the continual drain upon agriculture, by the great centres of population, have been overlooked by others besides the English teachers of agriculture;' and in the distribution of the productive forces, the world of the future has been divided into thickly peopled (manufacturing) and thinly peopled (agricultural) regions, and it has been supposed that the latter will feed the former!

We have endeavoured to shew that this arrangement is unworthy

unworthy of scientific agriculture, and that it may become more than inconvenient a few years hence, if it be not so already.

No one doubts that food is as necessary as fuel to the permanent welfare of a manufacturing country, but many believe that the public mind need not occupy itself with agriculture, as an economical question, and that price and supply may properly be left to self-adjustment. We do not deny the general principle, but it appears to us that agriculture and commerce may be influenced by commercial' and short-sighted aims and objects, and that the moral and economical advantages of a sound commercial system may be sometimes long delayed. The freedom of trade, which drew together large populations and doubled the size of our towns, did not directly teach sanitary science, and we have only learned by experience the consequences of infringing certain laws of nature.

It appears to us that the progress of agricultural improvement is delayed in much the same way, and that mechanics and the laws of physical science have been applied to farming while the laws regulating fertility have been ignored, and that the next step in agriculture can only be taken, with the aid of a combined effort, when public opinion has become more advanced in regard to those special subjects which we have here endeavoured to strip of their technical difficulty.

ART. VII.-The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. Vol. I. 8vo. London, 1872.

A

T last we have a picture and a judgment of Ireland by a hand at once competent, candid, and unsparing. Mr. Froude is too practised an historian, and has too disciplined a mind, not to make sure of the completeness, as well as the essential correctness, of his facts; though some of them no doubt may be open to question, and many more are sure to be fiercely controverted. Having no motives other than an inquirer's love of truth to bias or to warp his reason, he is able to draw his conclusions with confidence and without delusion; while, having no constituents, and holding no political office, he is in the fortunate position of being able to state those conclusions in clear, unperiphrastic, and decisive language. He has an historian's natural scorn for all the mealy-mouthed expressions, timid suppressions, plausible and flattering glosses, party exigencies or decorums, and deceptive, where not actually dishonest, colouring,

by

by which the real facts of the case have been persistently disguised, and false impressions as persistently conveyed or acquiesced in. With all this, he has the vast advantage of having lived long enough in Ireland to know the Irish thoroughly, and to love them much, and has found the clue to the true comprehension of their history and their politics in a sympathetic understanding of their character, alike in its weakness and its strength, such as, probably, not a dozen of our statesmen possess, and such as certainly not more than one or two ever venture openly to avow.

Mr. Froude's estimate of the causes which have brought Ireland into her present position, and got her relations with England into their actual complication and perplexity, appear to us in the main singularly just; and if there is occasionally something merciless in his exposure of the naked shamelessness of actions and pretensions, and something sternly uncompromising in his condemnation of the crimes, follies, and falsities, with which this page of the annals of the eighteenth century is so thickly strewn, his severity is never inequitable or disproportionate; while, in contrast with the hollow, unappreciative, fawning insincerities which have become the fashion in speaking of the Sister Island, it is indescribably refreshing. At the same time, there can be no doubt that this is a book which will give great offence and arouse the bitterest indignation. We cannot conceal from ourselves that its tone is often extravagantly, almost savagely severe, and that Irish faults and crimes are hunted down with a ferocity which has something of the bloodhound in the relentless pertinacity of its pursuit. Occasionally, too,—as when he heads his chapter describing the brutalities of abduction cases and other outrages, once so common, as 'Irish Ideas '-Mr. Froude allows himself to deviate into sarcasms not quite permissible to the dignity of history. Impartial the work certainly is not, and scarcely pretends to be. Sometimes it more resembles the speech of an accusing counsel, or the pamphlet of a political partisan, than a dispassionate narrative of past events; and in certain passages is rather an indictment than a history. But both the partisanship and the savageness are obviously not attributable to any unfairness of mind, nor even to any real injustice of estimate, but to a temperament to which some particular follies and vices are so especially repugnant that they inevitably come in for a disproportionate, though not an undue, share of blame. And, undeniably, the passion which pervades the book adds enormously to its interest.

The key-note of the whole argument is struck early in the first chapter, and is maintained consistently throughout the volume.

It is curiously in harmony with the views of Irish character and policy which this Journal has for years, but vainly, endeavoured to propound. Mr. Froude's introductory sections appear to us most remarkable, alike for grasp and philosophy of statesmanship, and for vigour and dignity of style;-though the broad and naked fashion in which his doctrine is laid down, will startle many who would not demur to its essential justice.

A natural right to liberty, irrespective of the ability to defend it, exists in nations as much as and no more than it exists in individuals. Had nature meant us to live uncontrolled by any will but our own, we should have been so constructed that the pleasures of one would not interfere with the pleasures of another, or that each of us would discharge by instinct those duties which the welfare of the community requires from all. In a world in which we are made to depend so largely for our well-being on the conduct of our neighbours, and yet are created infinitely unequal in ability and worthiness of character, the superior part has a natural right to govern; the inferior part has a natural right to be governed; and a rude but adequate test of superiority and inferiority is provided in the relative strength of the different orders of human beings. . . . As a broad principle it may be said, that as nature has so constituted us that we must be ruled in some way, and as at any given time the rule inevitably will be in the hands of those who are then the strongest, so nature also has allotted superiority of strength to superiority of intellect and character; and in deciding that the weaker shall obey the more powerful, she is in reality saving them from themselves, and then most confers true liberty when she seems most to be taking it away. There is no freedom possible to man except in obedience to law; and those who cannot prescribe a law to themselves, if they desire to be free must be content to accept direction from others. The right to resist depends on the power of resistance. A nation which can maintain its independence possesses already, unless assisted by extraordinary advantages of situation, the qualities which conquest can only justify itself by conferring. It may be held to be as good in all essential conditions as the nation which is endeavouring to overcome it; and human society has rather lost than gained when a people loses its freedom which knows how to make a wholesome use of freedom. But when resistance has been tried and failed-when the inequality has been proved beyond dispute by long and painful experience-the wisdom and ultimately the duty, of the weaker party is to accept the benefits which are offered in exchange for submission: and a nation which at once will not defend its liberties in the field, nor yet allow itself to be governed, but struggles to preserve the independence which it wants the spirit to uphold in arms by insubordination and anarchy and secret crime, may bewail its wrongs in wild and weeping eloquence in the ears of mankind,-may at length, in a time when the methods by which sterner ages repressed this kind of conduct are unpermitted, make itself so intolerable as to be cast off and bidden go

upon

upon its own bad way: but it will not go for its own benefit. It will have established no principle, and vindicated no natural right. Liberty profits only those who can govern themselves better than others can govern them, and those who are able to govern themselves wisely have no need to petition for a privilege which they can keep or take for themselves.'

It is, perhaps, a mistake, from an artistic point of view, to place at the beginning of a book the conclusions which the book itself is to lead up to and to justify, and which the reader, therefore, at this early stage, will seldom be prepared to accept in all their fulness. But, as Mr. Froude has done this, we will follow his example. The following extract-the only long one we intend to allow ourselves-contains the definitive judgment for which the remainder of the volume furnishes, in overflowing measure, the warrant and the evidence. After pointing out how Wales and Scotland became contented, and on equitable terms constituent portions of the British empire, the author proceeds :

Ireland, the last of the three countries of which England's interest demanded the annexation, was by nature better furnished than either of them with means to resist her approaches. Instead of a narrow river for a frontier, she had seventy miles of dangerous sea. She had a territory more difficult to penetrate, and a population greatly more numerous. The courage of the Irish was undisputed. From the first mention of the Irishman in history, faction fight and foray have been the occupation and the delight of his existence. The hardihood of the Irish kern was proverbial throughout Europe. The Irish soldiers, in the regular service of France and Spain, covered themselves with distinction, were ever honoured with the most dangerous posts, have borne their share in every victory. In our own ranks they have formed half the strength of our armies, and detraction has never challenged their right to an equal share in the honour which those armies have won. Yet, in their own country, in their efforts to shake off English supremacy, their patriotism has evaporated in words. No advantage of numbers has availed them : no sacred sense of hearth and home has stirred their nobler nature. An unappeasable discontent has been attended with the paralysis of manliness; and, with a few accidental exceptions, continually recurring insurrections have only issued in absolute and ever disgraceful defeat.

'Could Ireland have but fought as Scotland fought, she would have been mistress of her own destinies. In a successful struggle for freedom, she would have developed qualities which would have made her worthy of possessing it. She would have been one more independent country added to the commonwealth of nations; and her history would have been another honourable and inspiriting chapter among the brighter records of mankind. She might have stood alone; she might have united herself, had she so pleased, with England on