esuetude, so that in the industrial revolution at the beginning
of the nineteenth century Ireland was too severely crippled to derive
any benefit from the new order, as to which she was still further
handicapped by the poverty of her coal fields.

The land system, which is only now disappearing, served, moreover, not
to inculcate habits of thrift, but positively as a discouragement of
economic virtues. Until the legal recognition of tenant-right had been
secured, the tenant who made improvements was liable to have his rent
raised, and was aware that he had no legal right to compensation for
them on his removal from the holding. Further, the judicial fixing of
rents, which, as the time for rent revision has approached, has
presented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land,
and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source of
insidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil.

The social upheaval resulting from land purchase will nowhere be more
marked than in this respect in the stability which it will produce in
the financial conditions of the country, and it may be expected to do
something to remedy the lamentable state of things which so far has but
little altered from that of twenty years ago, when it was estimated that
five-sixths of the total capital of the country was invested abroad. A
great opportunity presents itself at the present moment. It was stated a
few years ago that eleven millions of rent were spent out of the island.
At this day when, under the Land Purchase Act, an immense amount of
property is being realised, the patriotic Irish landlord seeking an
investment for his money can, by starting industries in Ireland, at one
and the same time do a patriotic work by providing against the stream of
emigration, and can secure a safe and profitable investment for his
purchase-money. There are very nearly eighty million pounds of capital
to be set free under the Act, and it is scarcely too much to expect that
a large proportion of it will be invested by the expropriated landlords
in their own country. The possibility of an industrial revival in
Ireland is well illustrated by the increase in the number of
co-operative societies, in which there are at the present day 100,000
members, while less than twenty years ago there were only fifty.

The effect of the Dairy, Agricultural, and Poultry Societies is very
important, but perhaps of still greater importance are the Raffe