A Treatise on Industrial Resources (Still Neglected) in Ireland (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ... PART IV. DIFFERENCES, EXPLANATIONS, AND DESCRIPTIONS--GENERAL. There are many points of difference between England and Ireland; also between Ireland and Scotland; the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other places to which the people of Ireland are in the habit of emigrating. In relation to all these, it is alike true that difference does not necessarily imply inferiority in reference to those people who possess the least money, or of those-who are essentially different in some of their manners of social arrangements from others. The application of the rule by which degrees of civilization and progress are to be measured admits of a great variety in these things, whilst it defines exactly, and fixes most accurately, where the boundaries of the greater and the less are marked. The same rule enables us to decide on what are the characteristics of civilization and barbarism, and gives the marks and tokens by which retrogression and progress may be known. In respect to size, Ireland is about three-eighths less than England and Wales, and is over one-eighth larger than Scotland. Whereas, -in regard to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, the comparison is such as to render the relative differences in size of England, Ireland, and Scotland of but little importance. These, again, are small in comparison with others, especially the British possessions in North America. There is, therefore, but little, if any, reason for one of these small parts of the British Empire to boast against another in respect to square miles of area. But it is not so in regard either to position on the map, fertility of soil, or the several proportions of wastelands, whether irreclaimable from one or other of the many causes which..