a native and inhabitant of this kingdom, who gives the same verdict, must be either ignorant to stupidity, or a manpleaser at the expense of all honour, conscience, and truth.

AN

I RECEIVED a paper from you,

whoever you are, printed without any name of author or printer; and sent, I suppose, to me among others without any particular distinction. It contains a complaint. of the dearness of corn; and some schemes for making it cheaper, which I cannot approve of.

But pray permit me, before I go farther, to give you a short history of the steps by which we arrived at this hopeful situation.

It was indeed the shameful practice of too many Irish farmers, to wear out their ground with ploughing; while, either through poverty, laziness, or ignorance, they neither took care to manure it as they ought, nor gave time to any part of the land to re

* The memorial was written by sir John Browne,

cover itself; and when their leases were near expiring, being assured that their landlords would not renew, they ploughed even the meadows, and made such havock, that many landlords were considerable sufferers by it.

This gave birth to that abominable race of graziers, who, upon expiration of the farmers leases, were ready to engross great quantities of land; and the gentlemen having been before often ill paid, and their land worn worn out of heart, were too easily tempted, when a rich grazier made an offer to take all their land, and give them security for payment. Thus, a vast tract of land, where twenty or thirty farmers lived, together with their cottagers and labourers in their several cabins, became all desolate, and easily managed by one or two herdsmen and their boys; whereby the master grazier, with little trouble, seized to himself the livelihood of a hundred people.

It must be confessed, that the farmers were justly punished for their knavery, brutality, and folly. But neither are the squires and landlords to be excused; for to them is owing the depopulating of the country, the vast number of beggars, and the ruin of those few sorry improvements we had.

That farmers should be limited in ploughing, is very reasonable, and practised in England; and might have easily been done here by penal clauses in their leases: but to deprive them in a manner altogether from tilling their lands, was a most stupid want of thinking.

Had the farmers been confined to plough a certain quantity of land, with a penalty of ten pounds an acre for whatever they exceeded, and farther limited

for

for the three or four last years of their leases, all this evil had been prevented; the nation would have saved a million of money; and been more populous by above two hundred thousand souls.

For a people, denied the benefit of trade, to manage their lands in such a manner as to produce nothing, but what they are forbidden to trade with, or only such things, as they can neither export, nor manufacture to advantage, is an absurdity that a wild Indian would be ashamed of; especially when we add, that we are content to purchase this hopeful commerce, by sending to foreign markets for our daily bread.

The grazier's employment is to feed great flocks. of sheep, or black cattle, or both. With regard to sheep, as folly is usually accompanied with perverseness, so it is here. There is something so monstrous to deal in a commodity (farther than for our own use) which we are not allowed to export manufactured, nor even unmanufactured, but to one certain country, and only to some few ports in that country; there is, I say, something so sottish, that it wants a name in our language to express it by: and the good of it is, that the more sheep we have, the fewer human creatures are left to wear the wool, or eat the flesh. Ajax was mad, when he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies: but we shall never be sober, until we have the same way of thinking.

The other part of the grazier's business is, what we call black cattle, producing hides, tallow, and beef for exportation: all which are good and useful commodities, if rightly managed. But it seems, the greatest part of the hides are sent out raw, for want of bark to tan them; and that want will daily

grow stronger; for, I doubt, the new project of tanning without it is at an end. Our beef, I am afraid, still continues scandalous in foreign markets for the old reasons. But our tallow, for any thing I know, may be good. However, to bestow the whole kingdom on beef and mutton, and thereby drive out half the people, who should eat their share, and force the rest, to send sometimes as far as Egypt for bread to eat with it, is a most peculiar and distinguished piece of publick economy, of which I have no comprehension.

I know very well that our ancestors the Scythians, and their posterity our kinsmen the Tartars, lived upon the blood, and milk, and raw flesh of their cattle, without one grain of corn; but I confess myself so degenerate, that I am not easy without bread to my victuals.

What amazed me for a week or two, was to see, in this prodigious plenty of cattle, and dearth of human creatures, and want of bread, as well as money to buy it, that all kind of flesh meat should be monstrously dear, beyond what was ever known in this kingdom. I thought it a defect in the laws, that there was not some regulation in the price of flesh, a well as bread but I imagine myself to have tossed out the reason: in short, I am apt to think, that the whole kingdom is overstocked with cattle, both black and white: and as it is observed, that the poor Iish have a vanity to be rather owners of two lean cows, than one fat, although with double the charge of grazing, and but half the quantity of milk; so I conceive it much more difficult at present, to find a fat bullock or wether, than it would be if half of them were fairly knocked on

the