THE IRISH "RANCHES."
(To THE EDITOR OF THIC "SPECTATOR:1 Sin,—If I may say so, you and your correspondents have so far hardly reached the economic roots of the grazing question. The peculiarities of "fattening" land and the alphabet of the cattle-fattening industry are little understood. It is a mis- take to suppose that a " ranch " which will fatten a hundred bullocks in the season may be cut up into ten blocks each capable of fattening ten. Fattening cattle need change of ground, wide range, and constant access to unsoiled herbage. If the supply of these necessaries be curtailed, progress will be retarded and the "finish," which gives the highest market value to Irish grass-fed beef, imperfectly attained. If curtail- ment be pushed beyond a certain point, the fattening power of the land will vanish altogether. Thus a grass- farm which will fatten a hundred head would, if cut into ten equal blocks in different ownership, fatten only seventy or eighty, and, if divided into fifty such blocks, would fatten none at all, so that "striping out" the "ranches," if it achieved its end, would seriously injure or ruin the export trade in beef, which may almost be said to be the keystone of the whole edifice of Irish agriculture. The fattening quality possessed by certain tracts in Ireland is thus the chief industrial asset of the country. No land on earth possesses this quality in the same degree. But it must not be supposed that the areas which are richest in this respect are necessarily, or even often, the best for agricultural farming, or that they can ever be as productive under agriculture as when occupied by stock. As a matter of fact, the land which is eagerly snapped up by the grazier at 25 or more per acre for eleven months would as agricultural land seldom earn a rent of 23, or even 22, per annum, so that "striping it out" into agricultural holdings can only be accomplished at the cost of great sacrifice in productivity.
But this land Mr. Birrell, in sublime ignorance of these facts, proposes to "stripe out." He might just as well "stripe
out" the coalfields of England, and expect each bolder of an acre to sink a shaft and operate a miniature mine with the help of his wife and family. In either case there would be a vast sterilisation of existing wealth, a long period of unpro- ductiveness, and ultimately a slow and costly return to the former conditions. Even Liberal legislation cannot supersede the laws of Nature. It is not wonderful, however, that the mad policy of "breaking up the ranches" finds favour with those who look forward to possessing the fragments. Accord- ing to the system now followed by the Estates Commissioners, the beneficiaries will acquire blocks of from twenty to twenty- five acres, for agricultural purposes, at less than the agri- cultural value. But in practice there will be no resort to the plough. Indeed, as every one in Ireland—with the exception perhaps of the Chief Secretary—knows, the plough would impair for many decades the fattening value, on which every would-be possessor has his eye. The grazier will be there to rent a dozen or a hundred of the new proper- tie's, the owners of which will be gentlemen at large subsisting on the wide margin between repayments of principal and interest to the Exchequer and the grazing- rents. This prospect of independence, to be provided jointly by the Irish landlord and the British taxpayer, is the entice- ment which Mr. Ginnell, when his engagements permit, dangles before his followers. But by what bait has Mr. Birrell been attracted ? Was he taken snatching at a glittering lure borrowed from a tinsel Utopia, or when nibbling a mere vulgar hookful of vermicular Parliamentary automata ? His captors give him credit for the prefer- ence more honourable to his character than to his intelli- gence, if we may judge by a remark made by one of them —a local country politician—who, when asked what he thought of the Chief Secretary, replied with delightful candour : "Oh! Thank God for him ! Ho's the easiest humbugged of any they ever sent us yet,--and that's saying
[We understand that, in spite of it being contrary to agree- ments, the business of taking over a portion of a broken-up grazing-farm, and living in idleness on the difference between the sum obtained by subletting and the sum paid to Govern- ment as annual instalments of the purchase price, is already a flourishing one in Ireland.--En. Spectator.]
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