Arthur Young, whose "Agricultural Tours in Ireland in 1775, etc.," did so much for the improvement of this country, always advocated tillage in preference to grazing. Referring to the former, he says: "The products upon the whole [of Ireland] are much inferior to those of England though not more so than I should have expected; not from inferiority of soil, but from the extreme inferiority of management. . . . Tillage in Ireland is very little understood. In the greatest corn counties, such as Louth, Kildare, Carlow, and Kilkenny, where are to be seen many very fine crops of wheat, all is under the old system, exploded by good farmers in England, of sowing wheat upon a fallow and succeeding it with as many crops of spring corn as the soil will bear. . . . But keeping cattle of every sort is a business so much more adapted to the laziness of the farmer, that it is no wonder the tillage is so bad. It is everywhere left to the cotters, or to the very poorest of the farmers, who are all utterly unable to make those exertions upon which alone a vigorous culture of the earth can be founded; and were it not for potatoes, which necessarily prepare for corn, there would not be half of what we see at present. While it is in such hands, no wonder tillage is reckoned be unprofitable. Profit in all undertakings depends on capital; and is it any wonder that the profit should be small when the capital is nothing at all! Every man that has one gets into cattle, which will give him an idle lazy superintendence instead of an active attentive one."
How much of this is just as applicable to the state of things in our own times, as it was eighty or ninety years ago! Young would appear to be describing accurately the state of agriculture in Ireland just before the last destructive famine; but happily he would find at the present moment a considerable improvement. One change, however, which he would find would not be much to his taste. He would see even the humblest tenant farmer, as well as the large land occupier, placing almost his whole confidence in pasturage, and compelled to abandon tillage by the uncertainty of the seasons, the low price of grain, and the increasing price of labor.
[ORIGINAL.]
CLAIMS.
Nay,--claim it not, the lightest joy that throws
Its transient blushes o'er the beaming earth
Or the sweet hope in any living thing
As thine by birth.
No precious sympathy, no thoughtful care,
No touch of tenderness, however near;
But watch the blossoming of life's delight
With sacred fear.
Have joy in life, and gladden to the sense
Of dear companionship, in thought, in sight;
But oh! as gifts of heaven's abounding love,
Not thine by right.