Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/12

9 naturally considered of too great moment to be effectively debated on the motion of an uninfluential un-official member. I trust I may be more successful in the attempt I am now making to bespeak the attention due to it.

Though anxious to avoid all appearance of overestimating the merits of the particular measure I am recommending, yet I cannot refrain from expressing astonishment at the degree to which the almost inexhaustible resources offered by the waste lands of Ireland for the productive employment of the wretched and unwillingly idle labourers of that country have been overlooked and neglected, no less by statesmen than individual proprietors.

They would seem to offer the most obvious and natural resource. It is not that attention has not been constantly called to them. For, not to mention the Irish Bog Commission Reports from 1809 to 1814, and the frequent and strong recommendations on the subject by successive Committees and Commissions since that date, it is scarcely possible to open a work upon Ireland, or a petition or memorial from any part of the country, complaining of distress and asking for relief, without finding mention made in it of the immense extent of waste and unproductive but improveable land that lies in the vicinity of the district whose inhabitants are idle for want of work, and starving for want of food I As one example amid hundreds, I take a report, dated the 6th instant, from the Chairman of the