Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/28

25 waste land, after due notice to the owners, who might appeal to a court of arbitration, appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant, upon the questions of value, &c. Demesne lands were excepted. The usual provisions followed for authorizing the sale by incapacitated parties, and for appropriation of the purchase money. The commissioners were empowered to make such roads, drainages, fences, buildings, and generally to reclaim these lands, as they might think fit; and after laying them out in farms of any size, from five to one hundred acres, to sell or lease these farms publicly for long terms, giving the tenant the power to purchase the fee by instalments, on terms fixed from the firsts Strict provisions were introduced against excessive subdivision or sub-letting, at any time, and to ensure the amplest improvement of the land.

Such, avoiding details, was the general character of the measure; and had your Lordship, as at one time I had reason to hope, taken up and passed that or some similar measure, as an accompaniment to your Labour Rate Act of August, 1846, so as to have enabled the officers of the Board of Works in the past winter and spring to employ some of the 500,000 labourers they had upon their hands in the reclamation of bog and mountain land; nay, had your government, even so late as the appearance of Mr. Laboucbere's celebrated letter, only assumed the responsibility of construing the phrase "public works" in the Labour Rate Act to mean the