impoverishing himself, and wages would rise in consequence, both of the decrease in the number of labourers, and of the increase of the means of the farmers. Improvement to this extent would take place naturally and as a necessary consequence of the reclamation of the waste lands, and legislative interference would be requisite only to promote and confirm it. With these views, two suggestions may be offered: one, the enactment of a law rendering the grant of leases obligatory, a measure which, if no longer recommended by the same urgent necessity, would, when tenants were able to negociate with landlords on more equal terms, be no longer open to the same objection as at present; and the other, the allotment to the labourers remaining on the present cultivated area, of plots of common land, of half an acre or an acre in extent, on the same conditions as the grants made to the settlers on the wastes. The whole body of peasantry-labourers, cottars, and farmers-would then, for the first time, be placed in situations in which their subsequent lot would depend upon their own exertions. Specific instruction might still be necessary to teach them the value of the means at their command, but were this afforded, it cannot be doubted that industry would require no other stimulus than self-interest. Industry would introduce plenty, and plenty be accompanied by content. Tranquillity would suc ceed to desperation and violence, and capital would no longer be deterred from flowing wherever a suitable field were offered for its employment. Canals and railways would at once mark and facilitate the progress of enterprise, mines would be worked, fisheries and such manufactures as were adapted to the country established, the conveniences of civilised life would be multiplied and brought within the reach of every class of the community. The advance of national prosperity would correspond with that of individual happiness. The whole empire would receive a vast accession of vigour when its most exhausting drain was converted into an abundant source of wealth, and when the festering wound in one of her principal members was at length healed. A scheme, so simple, yet promising such brilliant results may perhaps, on that account alone, be summarily rejected as visionary. Large professions are generally received with distrust, the stronger and more natural, in proportion as they are declared to be easy of fulfilment. The condition of Ireland is commonly regarded as almost hopeless; ingenuity has long perplexed itself in attempts to investigate the nature of her disorder; every remedy hitherto applied has failed to afford even partial or temporary relief. It will not, then, be readily believed that the means of effecting a perfect cure were always at hand, open to view, but unnoticed or unappreciated. Yet, when every other prescription has been tried in vain, a new proposal is at least entitled to examination; and the one offered in the foregoing pages has stronger recommendations than that of mere novelty. Its adoption would procure for the peasantry an extension of territory, which, even if it were not, as it has been shown to be, the only means, would certainly be an infallible means of procuring for them that additional employment, without which they can never emerge from their present debasement. They themselves, with an instinctive perception of what their situation requires, are resolute in their demands for land, and are even now engaged with its actual proprietors in a fearful struggle, of which it is impossible to foresee the end. Yet, to pacify them by assigning additional tracts for their occupation, is not even pretended to be an object of any scheme hitherto propounded, save of this for the reclamation of the waste lands, and of another, already alluded to, for emigration to British America. The latter, beset as it is with difficulties, apparently insuperable, has nevertheless attracted a considerable share of attention; the very simplicity and practicability of the former are perhaps the cause of its having been treated with comparative neglect. Great statesmen will scarcely deign to listen unless some complicated project—some "great thing"-be submitted for their consideration. They N disdain to use plain and obvious methods for the cure of national leprosy, even as Naaman, the Syrian, hesitated to wash in Jordan and be clean, while there were Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel. APPENDIX. Letter to the Author from Mr. Le Beir, Secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of Guernsey, on the Produce of Wheat in that Island. MY DEAR SIR, GUERNSEY, GRAND MOULIN. There is no mistake in I am glad that our humble islet draws your notice on account of its great productiveness in wheat, and that it has kept a hold on your memory. the report unless on the part of the grower, and a mistake might certainly sooner occur in grain than in roots, of which a fair average perch out of a vergée is chosen, and seen dug, and weighed by a sub-committee of the general Agricultural Committee. In corn, hitherto, the prizes have been awarded to the best marketable qualities, the extended attention required from the committee, from the cutting to the winnowing of the corn, having deterred them from a further examination; so that it has been more out of curiosity than otherwise, that an account of the produce and a sheaf of the same corn have been required to accompany the bushel sample at the winter show. The largest produce in the last three years has been 9, 10, and 9 English quarters to the English acre, as declared solemnly by the growers, men of the highest respectability, in the |