THE IRISH LAND BILL.
[To Tea EDITOR OP TIM "SPECTATOR:] Sra,—You say in your comment on Mr. Kavanagla's letter : "We hold that the free working of economic laws will prove in the end much less cruel than the attempts, doomed to ultimate failure, to run counter to them" (Spettator, Decem- ber 5th). This is perfectly true, and unless this truth is recognised disaster must follow in Ireland. The laws of Nature are too strong for priests and politicians. Nature intended Ireland to be in greater part a pastoral country. The excellence of the grass produces meat of the highest quality, but the production of meat cannot be successfully undertaken on small patches of land. The competition is considerable in the English market. Skill, knowledge, and capital are necessary to meet it. If the grazing industry is to be destroyed, "to choose between the cattle and the people," large sums of money will be withdrawn from circulation in Ireland. Grazing cannot be successful on a limited area. I have one of the finest herds of the Kerry breed, and have gained champion prizes at the Royal Agricultural, Dublin. Shows. But I find, from the limited amount of land I hold and the large quantity of food I have to buy, that my expenses are too great to make a profit or pay the expenses of a large dairy which gives excellent milk to all the cottages around. It is at this moment very unwise to ruin any industry or business which produces capital in Ireland. The sales of property which must now take place will, I feel sure, lead a large number of the smaller owners of land in Ireland to leave and spend whatever income is left to them elsewhere, especially if hunting is opposed and shooting is not so easily obtained. If this takes place, a good deal of money will no longer be in circulation, and Ireland will be so much the poorer. An agricultural country cannot maintain a large population -without manufactures. Take the country from which I write -Germany—as an example. Manufactures seem to spring up in every village, aud the German peasant or Bauer works to an extent, with an endurance of man, woman, and child, to which no Irish peasant would submit. But if manufactures are to be encouraged, capital must be attracted to Ireland, and the careful investor avoids that part of what is still the United Kingdom. The relief of congestion is, as you further say, emigration to countries where land can be obtained on a scale sufficient for human existence, not the cutting up of laud already sufficiently employed into portions which cannot render a proper maintenance. The first one or two bad seasons, then famine comes. So Gott will.—I am, Sir, &a.,
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