Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/29

26 and reclamation of waste, as well as the cutting up^of good land by useless roads, what a different state of things would now be found to exist! Instead of those same much- abused roads, on which millions have been expended, almost to no purpose of future utility, and which still, it is said, require further millions to complete them, you would have reclaimed from the waste very many thousands of acres, which would even this season have borne crops, and would afford for the future permanent employment to thousands of labourers. The whole of this expenditure would have been not only productive, but remunerative. The entire sum. would either have been already replaced by immediate sale of the farms reclaimed, or would be paying a fair rate of interest. On these farms would have already settled, either by purchase or lease, thousands of those industrious men who last year fled from their country in despair of being able to make a living in it—carrying with them to Upper Canada or Illinois the capital they would have greatly preferred to expend at home, had any chance been opened to them of doing so with advantage.

But this was not to be. However favourably your Lordship might individually have been disposed towards such a measure, the Irish landlords, it must be presumed, were too decidedly opposed to the compulsory appropriation of any portion of their wastes. I presume this to have been the case