THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND."

I received a paper from you, wherever you are, printed without any name
of author or printer, and sent, I suppose, to me among others, without
any particular distinction. It contains a complaint of the dearness of
corn, and some schemes of making it cheaper which I cannot approve of.

But pray permit me, before I go further, to give you a short history of
the steps by which we arrived at this hopeful situation.

It was, indeed, the shameful practice of too many Irish farmers, to wear
out their ground with ploughing; while, either through poverty,
laziness, or ignorance, they neither took care to manure it as they
ought, nor gave time to any part of the land to recover itself; and,
when their leases are near expiring, being assured that their landlords
would not renew, they ploughed even the meadows, and made such a havock,
that many landlords were considerable sufferers by it.

This gave birth to that abominable race of graziers, who, upon
expiration of the farmer's leases were ready to engross great quantities
of land; and the gentlemen having been before often ill paid, and their
land worn out of heart, were too easily tempted, when a rich grazier
made him an offer to take all his land, and give his security for
payment. Thus a vast tract of land, where twenty or thirty farmers
lived, together with their cottagers and labourers in their several
cabins, became all desolate, and easily managed by one or two herdsmen
and their boys; whereby the master-grazier, with little trouble, seized
to himself the livelihood of a hundred people.

It must be confessed, that the farmers were justly punished for their
knavery, brutality, and folly. But neither are the squires and landlords
to be excused; for to them is owing the depopulating of the country, the
vast number of beggars, and the ruin of those few sorry improvements we
had.

That farmers should be limited in ploughing is very reasonable, and
practised in England, and might have easily been done here by penal
clauses in their leases; but to deprive them, in a manner, altogether
from tilling their lands, was a most stupid want of thinking.

Had the farmers been confined to plough a certain quantity of land, with
a penalty of ten pounds an acre for whatever they exceeded, and farther
limited for the three or four last years of their leases, all this evil
had been prevented; the nation would have saved a million of money, and
been more populo