" He averages the sum expended in
reclaiming the Lancashire mosses at L10 an acre, _all spent in_ manual
labour.[259] One thousand acres of Rawcliffe-moss in Lancashire was
reclaimed for L9,000, although high wages were paid to the labourers. It
pays, says Mr. Scrope, ten per cent. on the outlay, and now gives
constant employment to seventy labourers. In Ireland, he adds, private
enterprise cannot do such work. There is no capital. With regard to
reclamations made on the estate of Sir Charles Styles, in the county
Donegal, Captain Kennedy, the manager, testified before the Devon
Commission that the original cost of reclamation was refunded in three
years. And he further expressed his conviction that an outlay of L5 an
acre would pay ten per cent. on those lands.
What grave mysterious reasons of State, then, have prevented the Irish
wastes from being reclaimed? In the Famine, our roads were torn up and
made impassable to apply a labour test to destitution; food was next
served out without any such test; M Soyer was sent over to make cheap
soup for the million; the bone and sinew of the country were shipped off
to spend themselves in trying to subdue the wildernesses of another
hemisphere, or die _in transitu_, or on Grosse Isle and such
charnel-houses, whilst nearly five millions of reclaimable acres in
their own fertile load were still left as nature had left them.
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