and
impolitic consequences which the particular mode of this oppressive
system, and the instruments which it employs, operating, as we said, on
this extensive object, produce on the national prosperity, quiet, and
security.

The stock of materials by which any nation is rendered flourishing and
prosperous are its industry, its knowledge or skill, its morals, its
execution of justice, its courage, and the national union in directing
these powers to one point, and making them all centre in the public
benefit. Other than these, I do not know and scarcely can conceive any
means by which a community may flourish.

If we show that these penal laws of Ireland destroy not one only, but
every one, of these materials of public prosperity, it will not be
difficult to perceive that Great Britain, whilst they subsist, never can
draw from that country all the advantages to which the bounty of Nature
has entitled it.

To begin with the first great instrument of national happiness and
strength, its industry: I must observe, that, although these penal laws
do, indeed, inflict many hardships on those who are obnoxious to them,
yet their chief, their most extensive, and most certain operation is
upon property. Those civil constitutions which promote industry are such
as facilitate the acquisition, secure the holding, enable the fixing,
and suffer the alienation of property. Every law which obstructs it in
any part of this distribution is, in proportion to the force and extent
of the obstruction, a discouragement to industry. For a law against
property is a law against industry,--the latter having always the
former, and nothing else, for its object. Now as to the acquisition of
landed property, which is the foundation and support of all the other
kinds, the laws have disabled three fourths of the inhabitants of
Ireland from acquiring any estate of inheritance for life or years, or
any charge whatsoever on which two thirds of the improved yearly value
is not reserved for thirty years.

This confinement of landed property to one set of hands, and preventing
its free circulation through the community, is a most leading article of
ill policy; because it is one of the most capital discouragements to all
that industry which may be employed on the lasting improvement of the
soil, or is any way conversant about land. A tenure of thirty years is
evidently no tenure upon which to build, to plant, to raise inclosures,
to change the nature of the