conflicts between the colonists and the natives. There were some
efforts made in Ireland, by various enactments, to put down this evil,
and to provide employment for the large numbers that were disposed to
prey upon the industry of their neighbours, by robbery, beggary, and
destruction of property. But while there was a legal provision made
for the poor in England, there was none in Ireland, where the people
were, _en masse_, deprived of the means of self-support by the action
of the Government. Hence, so late as the year 1836, the poor-law
commissioners reported to the following effect:--

It appeared that in Great Britain the agricultural families
constituted little more than a fourth, whilst in Ireland they
constituted about two-thirds, of the whole population; that there
were in Great Britain, in 1831, 1,055,982 agricultural labourers;
in Ireland, 1,131,715, although the cultivated land of Great Britain
amounted to about 34,250,000 acres and that of Ireland only to about
14,600,000. So that there were in Ireland about five agricultural
labourers for every two that there were for the same quantity of land
in Great Britain. It further appeared that the agricultural progress
of Great Britain was more than four times that of Ireland; in which
agricultural wages varied from sixpence to one shilling a day; the
average of the country being about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the
earnings of the labourers came, on an average of the whole class, to
from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the
year round. Thus circumstanced, the commissioners observed, 'It is
impossible for the able-bodied in general to provide against sickness
or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the
destitution of their widows and children in the contingent event of
their own premature decease. A great portion of them are, it is said,
insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. Their