never before known. Are the producing forces of Ireland developed or smothered by it? The MEN of Ireland, the human organization, the most precious and productive of machines, the most fertilizing of animals, without whom land is worth nothing, (as will soon be discovered when the depopulation* has proceeded a little further,) can find no employment-are idle, starved, or expatriated. Next comes the LAND. Square leagues, capable of becoming the richest land under heaven, and the granary of Great Britain, are unproductive and uncultivated. The coals, the iron, the stone, the clay, unworked-almost unknown. The rivers, the ports, the water power, unused. Steam engines, railways, power-looms, blast-furnaces, rolling mills, scarcely exist in Ireland.

Look at the West Indies under the same "cheapest market" policy. The industry of the white man stopped, the blacks idle and relapsing into paganism and barbarism, the very dykes that fence against the sea going to ruin, sugar plantations abandoned, the land uncultivated, the roads obliterated. A planter we are told, can now hardly find his own house in the rank jungle. The same paralysis of producing forces, but not to

"I shall believe," says Milton, "there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation, (God turn the omen from us) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are forced by heaps to forsake their native country." And what is taking place in Ireland is beginning in Scotland, Wales, and England too, and will go on, unless a wiser legislation interposes. The observations in pages 47 and 48 were written two years ago, long before any alarm had been felt at depopulation.

the same extent, is apparent in Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. On the Canadian side of the boundary line between Canada and the United States, are unregulated imports (improperly called free-trade); on the side of the United States, is protection and its consequence-domestic industry. We are told that land one minute south of this imaginary line, is more than double the value of land one minute north of it.*

It is true these fatal symptoms are in the extremities, not the heart of the Empire: just as the deadly palsy first seizes the arms or hands.

But what is the most important interest in the heart of the three kingdoms ?-unquestionably, Agriculture. No other branch of industry employs a fifth of the capital. The value of its productions transcends all other industries put together. This vast aggregate value is the result of agricultural capital applied to the land.

The agricultural capital on which this development of the greatest of all producing forces depends, is in a state of consumption and decay, throughout the three kingdoms. Reader, if you are an actual grower of wheat, barley, or oats, and can speak from personal knowledge and experience, you know too well that this startling assertion is the sad and bitter truth. Yet is

* 66 Every colony of England would gladly separate from her, feeling that connection with her is synonymous with deterioration of condition." Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial. By Henry C. Carey, Philadelphia, 1851. This is a valuable book, replete with practical information as to the statistics of the Great Western world.

it a truth so unacceptable and unpalatable, that while men can shut their eyes to it, they will obstinately do so; especially those who are enjoying a short-lived prosperity springing from your losses, and those whose cherished theories, or sanguine anticipations, this sad truth disturbs.

And all this depopulation, distress, and loss throughout the Empire, happens at a time, when from the invention, and extended application of the steam-engine, of railways, and steam-ships, the most astonishing prosperity was to have been expected. Indeed, it is the countervailing influence of great discoveries in physical science, that mitigates the pressure of evils otherwise intolerable.

One lamentable and indisputable fact at least, is now before the eyes of all men. The agricultural and manufacturing bodies of the same country, are marshalled against each other, in hostile, not to say battle array. It is certain that some new arrangement of their differences, must be the result. What the details of that arrangement will be, no one can foresee. Yet it may safely be predicted, that it will be founded in justice for any other arrangement will be but a short and feverish truce. What is the justice of the case ?

:

A controversy has arisen, whether the agriculturists (who, in addition to their share of all other national burthens, in effect maintain the Church,) sustain a

heavier load than the manufacturers. Most impartial persons think they sustain a much heavier one. But this is not the true comparison. The English cultivator is undersold, not by the English manufacturer, but by the foreign grower. The true comparison, therefore, is between the burthens of the English farmer, and the burthens of the cultivator of the rich and virgin soils of the South of Russia, or of the States of Wisconsin, or Michigan, where wheat is worth on the spot, less than two shillings a bushel, and is given to the pigs. Countries, which by the aid of steam, are every year coming nearer. The English cultivator says, "I am willing to enter the lists, and will endeavour to keep up the cultivation of England against better climates, and richer and virgin soils. I will do my best to cultivate an inferior soil, in an ungenial and capricious climate. But over and above all this, you now call on me to bear national and parochial burthens, from which my new competitors, more favored by nature, are entirely free. Tax me, if you must.

But if you do, you must in justice tax my giant competitor too."

"I bear my share of the public burthens," says the Manchester man, "why should not you?" "You do not," says the agriculturist; "But suppose you did, What then? I am not favored by nature, you are. You have iron, coal, labor, and machinery, all in your favor. Natural and uncontrollable circumstances are at present, with you, and against me. I say at present, for I can imagine a situation for you—and peradventure, ere

long, it will not be an imaginary one-that will be a nearer parallel to mine. You now want your cotton from India, and are making a railway across the isthmus of Suez, to get at it. But suppose, that instead of the raw Indian cotton coming to England, that railway, and the East Indian railways, with which it is to be in correspondence, should transport to India, and distribute in Hindostan, English machinery, and instruction, to spin, and weave, and print the cotton on the spot where it is grown. A fine climate reduces to very little, the wants of a teeming, multitudinous, and highly ingenious, but rice-fed population, adapted by nature herself to the light industry of the cotton manufacture. Here are inexhaustible supplies of labor cheaper than cold, rainy, high-feeding Manchester can ever furnish. Adieu to the difficulty of transporting Indian cotton to England. It will come, but in the compendious shape of calicoes, shirting, sheeting, towelling, muslins, cheaper than ever were heard of. Do not suppose all this to be a mere illustration. It is actually happening at this hour in the United States. The cheap slave-labor and genial climate of the Southern and cotton growing States, is unexpectedly, but effectually superseding the dear free-labor of the North, and the expensive double transit of the material thither and back, by manufacturing the cotton on the spot where it is grown. Nay, in the case of India, the manufacture even of the very finest muslins would be but returning to its original and natural abode.