ge proportion of the owners of the soil of a country should
reside out of it, has been always regarded as a great evil, as well as a
real loss to that country. Mr. M'Cullagh's elaborate attempt to prove
there is no real pecuniary loss inflicted by mere absenteeism convinces
no impartial man, least of all does it convince those who experience,
daily in their own persons, the evils which inevitably result from
absenteeism. It is fallacious with regard to any country, but especially
so as regards Ireland, which, in his argument, he assumes to have her
proportion of the profit from the manufactured exports of the United
Kingdom, whereas she is not a manufacturing country at all, having as
exports, only some linen and the food that should be kept at home to be
consumed by her people. When taxes are to be levied and battles to be
fought, we are always an integral part of the United Kingdom; but when
there is a question of encouraging or extending manufactures, we are
treated as the rival and the enemy of England.[45]

The avarice and tyranny of landlords, is usually set down as a principal
cause of the great poverty and misery of the Irish people, during a long
period. If we examine the rents paid one hundred and fifty, or even one
hundred years ago, they will appear trifling when compared with the
rents of the present day; so that, at first, one is inclined to question
the accuracy of those writers who denounce the avarice and rack-renting
propensities of the landlords of their time. But when we examine the
question more closely, we find so many circumstances to modify and even
to change our first views, that by degrees we arrive at the belief,
that the complaints made were substantially true. If the rents of those
times seem to us very low, we must remember that the land, for the most
part, was in a wretched condition; that the majority of farms had much
waste upon them, and that the portions tilled were not half tilled; so
that whilst the acreage was large, the productive portion of the land
was only a percentage of it. Then, agricultural skill was wanting; good
implements were wanting; capital was wanting; everything that could
improve the soft and make it productive, was wanting. These and many
other causes made rents that seem trifling to us, rack-rents to the
farmers who paid them. Swift had no doubt at all upon the matter, for he
says: "Another great calamity is the exorbitant raising of the rents of
lands. Upon the de