Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/25

22 this assertion. It is not merely the insecurity of life and property prevailing there—nor the want of capital alone—nor the want of sufficiently secure tenure, or of a permanent interest—nor the embarrassments of proprietors—nor their habitual indolence and inertness—nor absenteeism. But it is the combination of all these impediments, and others besides, which has occasioned the neglect of such available means for enriching landlord, tenant, and labourer, if properly used. No doubt these impediments are capable of removal, and will be more or less, some or all of them, in course of time removed. But not in sufficient time to effect that great change in the existing relations between the numbers of the labouring population and the demand for their labour, which is immediately indispensable to avert ruin and revolution.

What is imperatively wanted is some means for securing immediate employment of a productive character, and such, if possible, as will directly increase the growth of food in the country, for many thousands of able-bodied men, who, during the next winter and spring (and probably for several following seasons) will, in very many localities, be left wholly unemployed by private enterprise. The waste lands— which are scattered very generally over the surface of the island, but especially abound, as I have already remarked, in the poorest districts, where labour is most redundant—offer you this, and the waste lands alone. Further useless expenditure