A PLEA

FOR

PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

FOR

PEASANT PROPRIETORS;

WITH

THE OUTLINES OF A PLAN FOR THEIR ESTABLISHMENT
IN IRELAND.

BY

WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON,

AUTHOR OF "OVER-POPULATION AND ITS REMEDY."

Modum agri imprimis servandum.

PLINII NAT. HIST., Lib. xviii.-7.

The lands of a country cannot be properly distributed, nor its agricultural
economy be of the most improved description, unless it contain a due admixture of
small, and of moderate-sized, as well as of large farms.

MACCULLOCH ON SUCCESSION TO PROPERTY.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

PREFACE.

SUCH a work as this, if published a few years ago, might have been expected to attract but little notice. The question of which it treats was then somewhat prematurely regarded as finally settled, and an attempt to revive it, if not resented as an impertinent intrusion on public attention, would probably have been received with that scornful indifference with which antiquarian dissertations are commonly received by the busier portion of mankind. Small farmers and small proprietors had been summarily condemned, and having been condemned unheard, the sentence passed upon them was on that very account the less likely to be reversed, inasmuch as no opportunity had been afforded for the state