BICHENO, J.E. Esq. Ireland, and its Economy; Being the Result of Observations Made in a Tour Through the Country in the Autumn of 1829.

London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1830. First edition. Octavo. pp. xvi, 308. Original quarter linen on paper boards, title on printed label on spine. A very good copy. Very rare.
COPAC locates only 8 copies. WorldCat 1.
James Ebenezer Bicheno, (1785-1851), author and colonial official, was born at Newbury, Berkshire, the only surviving son of James Bicheno, a well-to-do Baptist minister and schoolmaster at Newbury, who wrote politico-theological works, and his wife, Ann. James Ebenezer spent the first part of his life at Newbury, and there wrote An Inquiry into the Nature of Benevolence attacking the system of poor-law administration then prevailing in England. In 1822 he was called to the bar by the Middle Temple and joined the Oxford circuit, but continued his economic and scientific studies. In 1842 Bicheno was appointed colonial secretary in Van Diemen’s Land where he proved an efficient, though conservative, administrator. He died at Hobart Town of heart failure in 1851. He left an estate of about £1,500, bequeathing his herbarium to the public museum at Swansea in Tasmania and his 2,500 books to the Tasmanian Public Library.
In 1829 Bicheno visited Ireland, recording his impressions in Ireland and its Economy. In the preface to this work he states: “I had long harboured the desire of visiting a country, which contradicts the received theory of population and the established doctrines of political economists … Ireland is, therefore, to the moral and political philosopher what Australia is to the naturalist, - a land of strange anomalies; and he must be a very dull observer, who does not bring home, from either of these countries, something new and interesting … No convenient opportunity occurred, until last year, to fulfil my wishes … I could no longer delay the execution of my project … Our route lay through the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, the western part of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Carlow, Kildare, Dublin; then northward direct to Belfast returning through Armagh, whence I diverged through Monaghan to Enniskillen and Sligo”. From 1833 to 1836 he served on the commission, chaired by Archbishop Whately, investigating the condition of the Irish poor, but disagreed with its report which advocated extensive public works.
The chapters include: The Face of the Country - Peasantry - Travelling; Produce; Bogs; Habitations; Roads; Of the Confiscations - Cromwellian Settlement; Plantation of Connacht; Tenures of Land - Landlord and Tenant; Of the Catholics; Of the Protestants; Of Poor-Laws; Of Education, and Of Absentees.

[L3 2B]