in many places five, six, or seven parishes bestowed on one incumbent, who, perhaps, with all his tithes, scarce gets 100 l. a year.’  But there was at that time a member of the Irish House of Commons who was capable of taking a more enlarged view of the Irish question.  This was Mr. Arthur Dobbs, who belonged to an old and honourable Ulster family—­the author of a book on the ‘North-west Passage to India,’ and of a very valuable work on the ‘Trade of Great Britain and Ireland.’  He was intimately acquainted with the working of the Irish land system, for he had been many years agent of the Hertfort estate, one of the largest in Ireland.  There is among Boulter’s letters an introduction of Mr. Dobbs to Sir Robert Walpole, recommending him as a person of good sense, who had applied himself to the improvement of trade, and to the making of our colonies in America of more advantage than they had hitherto been.  He was afterwards made Governor of North Carolina.  I have mentioned these facts in the hope of securing the attention of landlords and statesmen to the following passage from his book accounting for the deplorable condition of the province of Ulster at that time, and the emigration of its industrious and wealth-producing inhabitants.  In my humble opinion it furnishes irresistible arguments in favour of a measure which should settle the Irish land question in such a manner that it would speak to the people of Ireland in the words of holy writ:  ’And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.  They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.’  Mr. Dobbs says:—­

’How can a tenant improve his land when he is convinced that, after all his care and toil, his improvements will be overrated, and he will be obliged to shift for himself?  Let us place ourselves in his situation and see if we should think it reasonable to improve for another, if those improvements would be the very cause of our being removed from the enjoyment of them.  I believe we should not.  Industry and improvements go very heavily on when we think we are not to have the property in either.  What can be expected, then, from covenants to improve and plant, when the person to do it knows he is to have no property in them?  There will be no concern or care taken to preserve them, and they will run to ruin as fast as made or planted.  What was it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to America but high rents, bad seasons, and want of good tenures, or a permanent property in their land?  This kept them poor and low, and they scarce had sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist or till their ground.  They never had anything to store, all was from hand to mouth; so one or two bad crops broke them.  Others found their stock dwindling and decaying visibly, and so removed before all was gone, while they had as much left as would pay their passage, and had little more than what would carry them to the American shore.