The Virginia Gazette

DUBLIN, June 27.

MR. YOUNG, in his tour through Ireland, has made some very judicious remarks which if attended to would be of great utility.

His complaint that the tillage hath been neglected is just. So much land lying uncultivated, and applied to grazing, is a public loss.

He says, that in the counties of Limerick, Tipperary, Clare, Meath, and Waterford, there are graziers and cow-keepers, who rent and occupy from three thousand to ten thousand pounds a year. This is scarcely to be seen in any other country.

Mr. Young adds, these graziers are too apt to attend to their claret (they are not singular in this) as much as to their bullocks. They live expensively, and being enabled from the nature of their business to pass nine-tenths of the year without any exertion of industry, contract such a habit of ease, that works of improvement would be mortifying to their sloth.

But he thinks the food on which the common people subsist nourishing; for, says he, when I see the people of a country in spite of political oppressions, with well formed, vigorous bodies, and their cottages warming with children; when I see their men athletic and their women beautiful, I know not how to believe them subsisting on unwholesome food.

And if any one doubts the comparative plenty which attends the board of a poor native of England and Ireland, let him turn to his meals. The variety he sees when which the English labourer eats his bread and cheese is well known.

But mark the Irishman's potato-bowl placed on the floor, the whole family on their haunches around it, devouring a quantity almost incredible; the beggar eating himself to it with a hearty welcome; the pig taking his share as readily as the wife; the cocks, hens, turkeys, geese; the cur, the cat, perhaps the cow, all partaking of the same dish.

Such guests are surely not to be seen altogether at any table in the known world. Were Hogarth now alive, he might make a striking caricature of it. Still, the entertainment, however simple, is marked by plenty and cheerfulness.

But, how shall we apologize for the people of a country, or those of higher rank, distinguished for their humanity, generosity, and hospitality, suffering the most useful members of the community thus to exist?