Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/17

14 with of a redundant population. As one consequence, the estate is eaten up by its pauper inhabitants. No rents or rates can be collected. And the memorial gives the names in full of some thirty or forty families inhabiting this true pauper-warren, who implore to be assisted to emigrate, or to be removed somewhere at the expense of somebody, to prevent their continuing to starve one another. Mr. Devitt, however, while he supports their prayer, in his "desire to catch at anything that may offer a palliative to their misfortunes," goes on to say (and I beg your Lordship to mark the words)—"Yet I hold that we have an ample field for the employment of what is now deemed a superabundant population. The very district I am describing possesses within itself mountain bog, and marsh (with an inexhaustible supply of limestone), more than enough, if brought into cultivation, to sustain five, aye  times its present amount of population."

I refer next to the case of a wider district; for example, the considerable estate of Sir Charles Style, in County Donegal, managed by Capt. Kennedy, whose valuable evidence on the subject was given in detail before the Devon Commission. Here, " by lettings of waste land during the last four years no less than 172 families have obtained a permanent means of support, and there still remain 3628 acres of similar land disposable for an extension of the same principle." "The original cost of the reclamation is refunded in three years, and £1s. 12. 9d. per