Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/413

Rh property could be justified by a reference to transactions which took place in the days of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William; nor that any practical purpose could be served by reviving ancient animosities of race.

With regard to the wrongs inflicted on Ireland by the penal code, I could be as warm, if not as eloquent, as Mr. Butt; and I sincerely hope that before long we shall see the Catholic clergy of Ireland placed on a footing of perfect equality with their brethren of the Protestant communities. But I abstained from enlarging on these topics because they were unconnected with the subject of my immediate inquiry. Moreover, it is not true that the fact of their landlords being Protestants, deteriorated the economical condition of the Irish tenant to the extent which has been implied. As Mr. Butt himself has admitted, and as Mr. Gregory, in his recent most able and statesmanlike speech, has still more distinctly told us, it was rather from the exactions of the middleman than from those of the head landlord, that the tenant suffered: but the middlemen in general were of the same race and religion as their tenants; nor do I imagine would any one dream of asserting that any difference of religion has rendered the relations between Mr. Herbert and his tenantry less friendly than those which prevail between the tenantry of the Kenmare estate and Lord Castlerosse. A government of religious ascendancy must always prove demoralizing, both to the rulers and to the ruled; but if the landlord of former days was imperious, it was not because he was a landlord, but because he was a member of a dominant sect, though, as a landlord, he would undoubtedly be afforded more ample opportunities of displaying this weakness in his character. But it is unjust to describe as peculiar to the landlord, failings which were the offspring of Acts of Parliament, and were more or less common to every member of the Protestant establishment.

The next statement of Mr. Butt's, to which I shall refer, is the following, p. 105:—

"I am still unwilling to part with Lord Dufferin's third letter without noticing two passages of no little significance; one, in which he avows himself the apologist of exorbitant rents; the other, in which I think he acknowledges his enmity to Ulster tenant right."

The first part of this sentence I need not dwell upon. If it affords Mr. Butt any satisfaction to disseminate such an assertion amongst our fellow-countrymen, of course I