ng of guns,
demolished the toll-keepers' houses, wrote threatening letters in the
name of the imaginary "Rebecca," and once went so far as to storm the
workhouse of Carmarthen. Later, when the militia was called out and the
police strengthened, the peasants drew them off with wonderful skill upon
false scents, demolished toll-gates at one point while the militia, lured
by false signal bugles, was marching in some opposite direction; and
betook themselves finally, when the police was too thoroughly reinforced,
to single incendiarisms and attempts at murder. As usual, these greater
crimes were the end of the movement. Many withdrew from disapproval,
others from fear, and peace was restored of itself. The Government
appointed a commission to investigate the affair and its causes, and
there was an end of the matter. The poverty of the peasantry continues,
however, and will one day, since it cannot under existing circumstances
grow less, but must go on intensifying, produce more serious
manifestations than these humorous Rebecca masquerades.

If England illustrates the results of the system of farming on a large
scale and Wales on a small one, Ireland exhibits the consequences of
overdividing the soil. The great mass of the population of Ireland
consists of small tenants who occupy a sorry hut without partitions, and
a potato patch just large enough to supply them most scantily with
potatoes through the winter. In consequence of the great competition
which prevails among these small tenants, the rent has reached an unheard-
of height, double, treble, and quadruple that paid in England. For every
agricultural labourer seeks to become a tenant-farmer, and though the
division of land has gone so far, there still remain numbers of labourers
in competition for plots. Although in Great Britain 32,000,000 acres of
land are cultivated, and in Ireland but 14,000,000; although Great
Britain produces agricultural products to the value of 150,000,000
pounds, and Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000
agricultural proletarians _more_ than in the neighbouring island. {272a}
How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from
this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the
labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The
consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants
to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the h