The Irish Domesday Book has appeared, but it is so
badly drawn up that we hardly care to analyse it. Tbo aamation given is that of a quarter of a century ago, and the gross estimated .rutal cannot, accorcung to the compilers, be discovered from any statistics. It appears, however, that the number of owners in Ireland is very small. Only 68,758 persons out of 5,409,435 own any land at all ; and of these, only 32,614 have more than an acre, the remainder owning among them all only 9,065 acres, chiefly house-property. In Connaught, in particular, 2,322 persons own 424 acres, while 2,941 own 4,188,207 acres. Speaking broadly, in fact, small proprietorship does not exist in Ireland, one man, Mr. Richard Berridge, having probably more land-150,000 acres in Galway—than all the peasant freeholders put together. The general conclusion, of course, is that the only way to make the Conservative class numerically strong in Ireland is to increase the security of tenure, so that "property" may mean quit-rent, but that is precisely the conclusion which the proprietors will never willingly draw.
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