Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/33

30 western unions (which are for half or more of their area composed of bog or mountain) through the coming winter and spring, and probably for several succeeding seasons, is certain. That these multitudes should be still for another year or two maintained in idleness at the public expense, either in or out of the workhouse, eating up the resources of the country without adding to them, and learning indolence and vicious dependence, and that in districts where waste land lies at their doors on which they might be profitably employed, if the law permitted its appropriation to the purpose, would amount to a pitch of barbarian folly, that the common sense of the three kingdoms would hardly tolerate. There has been more than enough of this already.

And where so usefully, and in every other respect, moral and political, as well as economical, so advantageously, as in adding to the cultivated area of the country, preparing the present abode of the snipe and curlew to afford subsistence, industrial occupation, and a happy residence in their native land, to civilized men and loyal subjects. At this moment there are hundreds of thousands of able-bodied Irishmen, anxious to perform all their duties to society, asking only for leave to toil, and by their labour to increase its wealth and prosperity, but to whom the suicidal law imposed by that society has denied a spot of land on. which to exercise their industrial propensities—has refused them the