Indeed, I doubt whether Parliament realises one-tenth of the problems which the latest land legislation--by far the best we have yet had--leaves unsolved.

This becomes only too clear the moment we consider seriously the fundamental question of the relation of population to area in rural Ireland, or, in other words, when we inquire how many people the agricultural land will support under existing circumstances, or under any attainable improvement of the conditions in our rural life.
Roughly speaking, the surface area of the island is 20,000,000 acres, of which 5,000,000 are described in the official returns as 'barren mountain, bog and waste.' This leaves us with some 15,000,000 acres available for agriculture and grazing, which area is now divided into some 500,000 holdings.

Thus we have an average of thirty acres in extent for the Irish agricultural holding.

But, unhappily, the returns show that some 200,000 of these holdings are from one to fifteen acres in extent.

Nor do the mere figures show the case at its worst.