Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/11

8 2. An improved landlord and tenant law.

3. A measure for commencing the immediate reclamation of the waste lands.

These three measures are almost inseparable, all are fitted to work well together, and it would be difficult to say which is most urgently required.

If I begin, therefore, by enforcing upon your Lordship's attention the last as the most pressing in urgency, it will be chiefly because I have been led myself to pay the greater consideration to it of late; having introduced, as you are aware, a bill for the purpose in 1846; and because the subject is involved, I believe, in fewer difficulties, and is capable of a more immediate and simple adjustment than either of the others. It has the great advantage, moreover, of having been already recommended to Parliament by yourself, as one of the leading measures required for the improvement of Ireland.

On this latter ground I hope I shall not be considered, in the arguments I may address to you in its favour, as presuming to indoctrinate you on the subject, but rather as endeavouring to draw the attention of the public to the facts and reasonings on which rest the views your Lordship has already declared, but which you have hitherto had no opportunity of supporting by argument. In the pressure of. other public business last session, I vainly attempted, more than once, to obtain a Parliamentary discussion of the question. Of this I have no reason to complain. The subject was