Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/162

Rh But, it may he objected that even though emigration, rack rents—and their natural result—low farming, are equally rife under every description of tenure, and cannot therefore wholly be set down to the pernicious influence of the owners of landed property, yet, some human agency must be accountable for the perennial desolation of a lovely and fertile island, watered by the fairest streams, caressed by a clement atmosphere, held in the embraces of a sea whose affluence fills the noblest harbours of the world, and inhabited by a race—valiant, generous, tender—gifted beyond measure with the power of physical endurance, and graced with the liveliest intelligence.

It is to the discovery of this enigma that I now address myself, and in its solution it is possible we may find an answer to the famous question originally put to the Kilkenny Parliament, and lately repeated with considerable point by Mr. Bright,—"How is it that the King is none the richer for Ireland?"