It is that of the cheap food offered by the potato. Taking into consideration the low nutritive value of the flour of the potato as compared with that of wheat, and also taking into account the comparative yield per acre of the two crops in weight, it results that a people which is content to eat potatoes may be fed at a third of the price of a people that eats wheaten bread. Agriculturally regarded, it is the estimate of Mr. James Caird, that an acre of wheat will sustain three and a half individuals for a year. It is the estimate of the writer we have before cited, an Irish agriculturist, that an acre of potatoes will sustain ten persons for a year. The labour actually required for planting and harvesting the root crop is much less than that demanded for the grain crop; although it is in practice rendered somewhat more by the application of the plough in the one case, and of the spade or hoe in the other. Of the useful nature of the potato, allowance being made, as above stated, for the low proportion of its flesh-giving elements, it is unnecessary to speak.

We thus see, on the one hand, the possibility of maintaining, as far as the staple article of food goes, from the soil of Ireland a population equal in density to that of either Middlesex or Lancashire. While, on the other hand, for those who regard cheapness of production as the chief source of national wealth, the economical value of the potato must be ranked higher than that of any food produced in temperate climates.

But it is impossible to contemplate the actual condition of a potato-eating peasantry, to which it is unnecessary here more definitely to allude, without becoming convinced that moral as well as economical considerations have to be taken into account when we regard that price of the staple of food which forms the unit of labour, and thus of national wealth. The importance of rightly estimating the unit of labour is capital. The price of any commodity can be measured in silver or in gold from year to year; but its permanent cost is the amount of labour requisite for its production, and this varies but little, as regards the fruits of the ground, from age to age. If it be possible so to reduce the labour price of food as to enable a man to produce in one day as much as he formerly could do in three or four, two different results are conceivable. One is, that he would devote the time thus saved to some other industry, and thus at least double his income. The other is, that he would work the necessary time, and no more, and in reality that he would treble his idleness. In point of fact, the latter is what we find to occur all over the globe, from the palm fields and banana groves of

The

tropical countries to the potato fields of Ireland. small amount of labour required for obtaining sustenance from the potato is taken as the measure of necessary labour, and all other kinds of industry suffer in the same proportion. We do not say that this must be, or ought to be, the case. Far from it. But no one who knows Ireland can doubt that it is the case.

The rate of wages in the country districts of Ireland is stated by Sir Robert Kane at from 8d. to 10d. per day. This is very little more than the absolute cost of slave labour, which a reference to such a book as Sir T. Brassey's Work and Wages' will show to be 73d. per day. And in the same way that the experience of that great employer of labour, Mr. Brassey, has shown that low wages do not mean cheap work, we find that the Irishman at 8d. per day is a much more unprofitable labourer than the same man at double the pay, under proper encouragement and supervision. On the Enniskillen Railway the Irish labourer was paid 1s. 6d. per day. In Pembrokeshire, on the South Wales Railway, the contractor paid 2s. 6d. per day to the waggon-fillers, when 1s. 6d. per day was the ordinary price of a superior kind of labourer in the county. But with the higher pay and better food, the men did the work required; at the lower pay they could not perform it. To enable a man to raise so many tons of earth so many feet, a certain quantity of nutritious food must be eaten by him, and the whole experience of our railways has proved-and Mr. Brassey's book may be referred to in support of the statement-that, within certain limits, the higher the rate of wages, the cheaper is the work.

It is the outcome, then, not of theory but of experience, that the provision of food at a very low cost of labour, instead of proving a national economy, may prove a national waste and loss. If we suppose that the same amount of labour is required to prepare, sow, and harvest an acre of wheat and an acre of potatoes, the units of labour in the two cases will be as 10 to 3. Instead of being enriched by the lowering of price, the country will be impoverished by the diminution of labour in that proportion; and the low unit established for agricultural labour will influence and reduce the price for skilled labour of every description; and will-or at all events does-diminish the productive industry of the country at least in that proportion.

Questions of this nature acquire more importance from the fact that, since the introduction of the potato into Ireland, almost every kind of Irish industry, excepting agriculture, has

withered and dried up. Nor, in spite of the great fertility of the soil, can it be for a moment thought that Irish agriculture has made up for the absence of Irish manufactures. In Great Britain and in Ireland, according to the census of 1831, the respective proportions of the population are thus stated by Sir Robert Kane

In 1871, according to an abstract of the census made by Mr. G. Phillips Bevan, in his valuable little book, 'Industrial Statistics' (p. 173), the numbers of persons engaged in agriculture were as under

We have placed side by side with Mr. Bevan's totals the acreage under tillage in the two islands in the same year. From this it appears that each person employed in agriculture cultivated, in Great Britain, 9.85 acres ; in Ireland, 5·34 acres. In other words, the efficiency of Irish labour, measured by the area cultivated, is 56 per cent. of that of British labour. What may be the proportion as measured by the results of tillage, we have not the means of ascertaining; but there can be little doubt in which direction the difference will be found to exist. Again we find the efficiency of work to sink with the rate of wages and with the cost of the staple of food.

We have scrupulously avoided touching on any of those religious, moral, or political questions on which opinion is so divergent and contradictory, in order to confine ourselves to that economical analysis as to which there can be no debate. There is no doubt that Ireland may safely challenge any European country north of the Alps for wealth in natural resources. She possesses in each of the three kingdoms of nature, in the products of air, water, earth, and what lies under the earth, the chief of those treasures which elsewhere are not found together. But these great national stores of wealth are unsolicited by human industry; and the island of the Saints,' which might be made a terrestrial paradise, is certainly not now altogether deserving of that flattering title.

F. R. CONDER.

ART. V.-Count Campello.

107

(1) Discorso del Santo Padre ai Pellegrini Italiani.

Discourse of the Holy Father to the Italian Pilgrims (Voce della Verità newspaper, 17th October, 1881).

(2) Enrico di Campello. Cenni autobiografici che rendono ragione dell' uscita di lui dalla Chiesa Papale. Roma, 1881.

Henry di Campello. Autobiographical Notices which give the reason for his quitting the Papal Church. (3) Count Campello. An Autobiography; with an Introduc tion by the Rev. WILLIAM ARTHUR, M.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

(4) Risposta al libro La Nuova Italia ed i Vecchi Zelanti' del Sac. C. M. Curci. Per un Padre della Compagnia di Gesù. Prato, 1881.

Answer to the book of the priest, C. M. Curci, entitled New Italy and the Old Zealots.' By a Father of the Company of Jesus.

(5) La Civiltà Moderna difesa; contra la risposta al libro La Nuova Italia ed i Vecchi Zelanti.' Per Monsignore Giambattista Savaresse, Prelato domestico di S. Sanctità, &c. Napoli, 1881.

Modern Civilization Defended; against the answer to the book entitled New Italy and the Old Zealots.' By Monsignore Savarese Giambattista, Domestic Prelate to His Holiness, &c. Naples, 1881.

Ir may be easily understood and readily admitted that it is no mere lust for the material advantages of temporal dominion that moves the Roman Pontiff and the princes of the Church to demand incessantly from all the powers of heaven and earth the restoration of the power of making or overriding law in the administration of their Church. To their traditional habits of mind it seems an unheard-of and monstrous thing, necessarily subversive of all truth and right, that they should be absolutely without any power of preventing, putting down, or punishing the authors of such writings as the second and fourth of those named at the head of this article. For a while after the loss of that power the old habits of ecclesiastical discipline, the promptings of interest, and the ties forged by esprit de corps were strong enough among the Italian clergy to prevent any very notable instance of rebellion against the old authority. And that such does not still continue to be the case may perhaps be in part attributed to the fact that, in the highest spheres of its inmost councils, the Papacy has during the present pontificate been but too clearly seen, despite

withered and dried up. Nor, in spite of the great fertility of the soil, can it be for a moment thought that Irish agriculture has made up for the absence of Irish manufactures. In Great Britain and in Ireland, according to the census of 1831, the respective proportions of the population are thus stated by Sir Robert Kane

In 1871, according to an abstract of the census made by Mr. G. Phillips Bevan, in his valuable little book, 'Industrial Statistics' (p. 173), the numbers of persons engaged in agriculture were as under

We have placed side by side with Mr. Bevan's totals the acreage under tillage in the two islands in the same year. From this it appears that each person employed in agriculture cultivated, in Great Britain, 9.85 acres; in Ireland, 5·34 acres. In other words, the efficiency of Irish labour, measured by the area cultivated, is 56 per cent. of that of British labour. What may be the proportion as measured by the results of tillage, we have not the means of ascertaining; but there can be little doubt in which direction the difference will be found to exist. Again we find the efficiency of work to sink with the rate of wages and with the cost of the staple of food.

We have scrupulously avoided touching on any of those religious, moral, or political questions on which opinion is so divergent and contradictory, in order to confine ourselves to that economical analysis as to which there can be no debate. There is no doubt that Ireland may safely challenge any European country north of the Alps for wealth in natural resources. She possesses in each of the three kingdoms of nature, in the products of air, water, earth, and what lies under the earth, the chief of those treasures which elsewhere are not found together. But these great national stores of wealth are unsolicited by human industry; and the island of the Saints,' which might be made a terrestrial paradise, is certainly not now altogether deserving of that flattering title.

F. R. CONDER.