A plea for peasant proprietors;: With the outlines of a plan for their establishment in Ireland (Reprints of economic classics)

This discussion of the productivity of small farms, and the social and moral effects of peasant proprietorship includes an appraisal of the effects of peasant proprietorship in France and its suitability to Irish agriculture. Thornton's friend, J.S. Mill, in the chapter on 'Peasant Proprietors' in his Principles, characterized the Plea as "a book which, by the excellence of both its materials and of its execution, deserves to be regarded as the standard work on that side of the question." Revived in 1870, it influenced the passage of the Irish Land Act of the same year.