The autobiography from which I have been quoting was begun by Edgeworth when he was about sixty-three, and it breaks off abruptly at the date of 1781.  The illness which interrupted his task did not, however, prove fatal, for he lived nearly ten years afterwards.

His daughter Maria takes up the narrative, and in her introduction she says, ’In continuing these Memoirs, I shall endeavour to follow the example that my father has set me of simplicity and of truth.’

The following memorandum was found in Edgeworth’s handwriting:  ’In the year 1782 I returned to Ireland, with a firm determination to dedicate the remainder of my life to the improvement of my estate, and to the education of my children; and farther, with the sincere hope of contributing to the amelioration of the inhabitants of the country from which I drew my subsistence.’

When in the spring of 1768 Edgeworth visited Ireland with his friend Mr. Day, the latter was surprised and disgusted by the state of Dublin and of the country in general.  He found ’the streets of Dublin were wretchedly paved, and more dirty than can be easily imagined.’  Edgeworth adds:  ’As we passed through the country, the hovels in which the poor were lodged, which were then far more wretched than they are at present, or than they have been for the last twenty years, the black tracts of bog, and the unusual smell of the turf fuel, were to him never-ceasing topics of reproach and lamentation.  Mr. Day’s deep-seated prejudice in favour of savage life was somewhat shaken by this view of want and misery, which philosophers of a certain class in London and Paris chose at that time to dignify by the name of simplicity.  The modes of living in the houses of the gentry were much the same in Ireland as in England.  This surprised my friend.  He observed, that if there was any difference, it was that people of similar fortune did not restrain themselves equally in both countries to the same prudent economy; but that every gentleman in Ireland, of two or three thousand pounds a year, lived in a certain degree of luxury and show that would be thought presumptuous in persons of the same fortune in England.

’On our journey to my father’s house, I had occasion to vote at a contested election in one of the counties through which we passed.  Here a scene of noise, riot, confusion, and drunkenness was exhibited, not superior indeed in depravity and folly, but of a character or manner so different from what my friend had even seen in his own country, that he fell into a profound melancholy.’

It was to remedy this wretched state of things in Ireland that Edgeworth resolved in 1782 to devote his energies.

It is curious to read his account of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland at this date.  He soon learned that firmness was required in his dealings with his tenants as well as kindness.  ’He omitted a variety of old feudal remains of fines and penalties; but there was one clause, which he continued in every lease with a penalty attached to it, called an alienation fine—­a fine of so much an acre upon the tenant’s reletting any part of the devised land.’