Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/31

28 reclaimable land, which they either cannot or will not make use of themselves, nor permit others to improve or cultivate on fair terms, to be still all-powerful? Are they still to be permitted to lock up one-third of the area of the entire island in a state of barrenness, at a time when they are themselves complaining that it is over-peopled, and asking for public money to transfer their tenantry to America, and to feed their able-bodied poor?

Surely these are not times, and Ireland, in its actual state, is not the country in which the conventional rights of property can be so strained with safety I Waste land ought to be considered the domain of the State (as in all new countries and throughout the eastern hemisphere it is, and has been considered from time immemorial— as in our own colonies we ourselves treat it)—to be appropriated by individuals only on condition of reclamation and productive occupancy. Where multitudes starve for want of the land which lies waste around them, the law which keeps the labour and the land asunder is not in accordance with, but is directlv opposed to the principle on which alone property in land can be justified, and is admitted by jurisconsults to rest; namely, the expediency of encouraging its improvement and cultivation. But, independently of this argument, it is sufficient to ask what peculiar sanctity can there be in waste lands, that is to protect them from that appropriation to public uses, when required, which is daily practised,