PART THE FIRST.—“The investigations and inquiries in which I have been engaged, have led to a conviction that Ireland has, on the whole, during the last thirty or forty years, been progressively improving. It is impossible to pass through the country without being struck with the evidence of increasing wealth almost everywhere apparent, although it is of course more visible in towns than in the open country. Great as the improvement in England has been within the same period, that in Ireland, I believe, has been equal. There are towns and districts there, as there are towns and districts in England, in which little improvement is seen, or which may even have retrograded; but the general advance is certain, and the improvement in the condition and increase in the capital of the country, are still, I think, steadily progressive. If it be asked how this accords with the misery and destitution apparent among a large portion of the people, the answer is obvious—The capital of the country has increased, but the increase of the population has been still greater; and it therefore does not follow that there is an increase of capital or comfort in the possession of each individual, or even of the majority. The reverse is unhappily the fact—Towns, exhibiting every sign of increased wealth, are encircled by suburbs composed of miserable hovels, sheltering a wretched population of mendicants. In the country, evidence of the extreme subdivision of land everywhere appears, and as a consequence, the soil, fertile as it naturally is, becomes exhausted by continual cropping; for the cottier tenant, too often reduced to a level little above that of the mendicant, is unable to provide manure for his land, and has no other mode of restoring its vigour but by subjecting it to a long and profitless fallow. Farmers of three hundred acres, or even of two or one hundred, except in the grazing districts, have become almost extinct in Ireland. A variety of circumstances seem to have contributed to bring about this change. In some instances the proprietor has himself subdivided his land into small holdings of five, ten, or fifteen acres, with a view of increasing his rent-roll, or adding to his political influence. In other cases the land has been let on lease to a single tenant on lives, or for a term of years, or both conjointly; and he has sublet to others, who have again gone on dividing and subletting, until the original proprietor is almost lost sight of, and the original holding is parcelled out among a host of small occupiers.