An immediate palliation of this indigence would be the result of introducing a legal pauper-system into Ireland; but it would be at the expense of an incalculable permanent increase of the evil. To levy a poor-rate on the country at large would be impolitic, since it would only increase the primary grievance of an insufficiency of capital, by causing a further unproductive consumption of it. To throw the burthen of a pauper-system on absentees would be especially unjust, since they bear precisely the same relation to the wealth of their country as its resident capitalists. In the case of Ireland, as in all analogous cases, permanent relief can be effected only by adjusting the proportions of capital and population; and this must be attempted by means suited to her peculiar circumstances. The growth of capital should be aided by improvements in agricultural and domestic economy, and by the removal of political grievances; from which would follow a union in place of an opposition of interests. Population should be reduced within due limits, In the present emergency, by well-conducted schemes of emigration; and Permanently, by educating the people till they shall have become qualified for the guardianship of their own interests. A sameness in the natural laws of distribution exactly reverses the order of possession in new countries, i. e., in those where capital abounds in proportion to population. There the landowner (if any one finds it worth his while to be a landowner without being either a capitalist or a labourer at the same time) gains no real rent till the best land is all under cultivation, and then very little till a third degree is resorted to. The capitalist, meanwhile, makes less than the labourer; or would gain less if he were not, like the landowner, a labourer also. Where labour is so dear, all are labourers; and the labourer, by a very natural process, soon becomes a capitalist and a landowner; and then he may chance to learn what a strange thing it seems to a man from the mother-country to let land of a fine quality for no better rent than a small share of the produce; and how vexatious it is, after having reaped splendid returns to capital, to have to pay away, in the purchase of labour, all but little more than the ordinary profits of stock.