Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Social conditions
_Class B._—The second class of land, composed of holdings from 15 to 20
acres and over, is sold to its actual holders for the price of their
tenant right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In the
contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to them at the rate fixed
upon by experts, and the fee simple is put up for sale by auction. The
ultimate proprietors of these domains of average extent receive, by the
hands of the local agents for the _Bank of Liquidation_, every facility
to form themselves into unions for the collective culture of their land.
They remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in their own
fashion.
_Class C._—The third portion of the soil, formed by the choicest land,
shall be put aside in each district to form a great domain where
experiments shall be tried and examples given in agriculture—a domain
managed by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations of
agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on the product of the
land, partly by participation in the nett profits. Not only shall there
be introduced on those great domains, together with the finest breeds of
cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of culture, but, besides,
public demonstrations and lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils
shall be formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
price. These model-farms alone remain the property of the State, and are
inalienable.
Thus would be constituted at once, together with a class of peasant
proprietors, the middle and great cultures which are equally wanting in
Ireland.
Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to expropriation (for
25 years at least) any owner non-resident on his property, and forbid,
under pain of heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of land
under 12 acres.
Other laws, imitated from the _Homestead Exemption_ of the United States,
protect the peasant against debt. The _Liquidation Bank_, after having
set the new system in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the small and middling
landowners, which must before long kill usury and drive it from the
country. This bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad basis, for all the
financial wants of agricultural industry.
Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in the country, circulating
freely, and incessantly undergoing its normal transformations, health
returns by degrees to the social body. There is no longer any question
of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary, it is rather hands that are
wanted on all those flourishing estates which have day-work to offer, not
only to the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed of Great
Britain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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