erties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of
the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of the
time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to
me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with
permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the
Irish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no English
precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English
politicians and the English public concerning all social phenomena not
generally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my
endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste
lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliament
passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has
not since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the joint
operation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for its
deliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, the
depopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued by
emigration.

The rapid success of the _Political Economy_ showed that the public
wanted, and were prepared for such a book. Published early in 1848, an
edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. Another
similar edition was published in the spring of 1849; and a third, of
1250 copies, early in 1852. It was, from the first, continually cited
and referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely of
abstract science, but also of application, and treated Political Economy
not as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch
of Social Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that
its conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true
conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes not
directly within its scope: while to the character of a practical guide
it has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to
mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but
political economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken upon
themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
But the numerous sentimental enemies of political economy, and its still
more numerous interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been very
successful in gaining belief fo