suffice for a general reader; the resources of Ireland were estimated, a few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of Great Britain at not less than ten thousand millions.[14] The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent in the relations that have been formed in the land. I shall dwell, at some length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the characteristics of the Irish land system, and on the revolution through which it has passed; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. That system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though these had been, in a great degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the Anglo-Protestant landlord and the Catholic and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent, effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, though absentee estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the security of the peasants' tenure. The power of the dominant landlord class was declining; it was being weakened by the Castle bureaucracy, and by the emancipation of Catholic Ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers of the soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the landed gentry were improving men, who were making a beginning in the scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed. But the population, we have seen, had increased by millions Ireland could not support; over whole districts, especially in Munster and Connaught, the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge multitude of human misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. The worst vice of the system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which I shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had