d been absent) would have
been remitted (to England)?" "No," he replies, "I do not see how it
could be benefited in the least. If you have a certain value laid out
against Irish commodities in the one case, you will have a certain value
laid out against them in the other. The cattle are either exported to
England or they stay at home. If they are exported the landlord will
obtain an equivalent for them in English commodities; it they are not he
will obtain an equivalent for them in Irish commodities; so that in both
cases the landlord lives on the cattle, or on the value of the cattle:
and whether he lives in Ireland or England there is obviously just the
very same amount of commodities for the people of Ireland to subsist
upon."[316] Mr. Senior exposes this fallacy in the following words;
"This reasoning assumes that the landlord, whilst resident in Ireland,
himself personally devours all the cattle produced on his estates; for,
on no other supposition can there be the very same amount of commodities
for the people of Ireland to subsist upon, whether their cattle are
retained in Ireland or exported."[317] It may be said with equal truth,
that to assume, as Mr. M'Culloch assumes, the Irish absentee's residence
in England to be of no advantage to the people there, is assuming that
"himself personally" devours all the cattle and corn sent to him in the
shape of rent. But the landlord does not in either case devour all the
beef and all the corn; by far the greater portion of those products go
to house, and clothe, and feed the persons who minister to his various
wants.

In the beginning of his Essay on Absenteeism Mr. M'Culloch, referring
with apparent satisfaction to his evidence before the Committee, says,
"it had been previously established, and is now universally conceded
that the gentlemen who consume nothing in their families but what is
brought from abroad are quite as good, as useful, and as meritorious
subjects as they could be, if, they consume nothing but what is produced
at home; and such being the case, it will require a sharper eye than has
yet looked at this subject, to discover the great injury which is said
to be done by their going abroad."[318]

With the greatest respect for Mr. M'Culloch's skill as a political
economist, this proposition has neither been established nor conceded in
the unlimited sense in which he here puts it forward. Enthusiastic men,
who become enamoured of some favourite theory, are