Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/34

31 right even of a resting place for the sole of their foot—whilst this same law empowers a few other individuals to retain millions of acres of reclaimable Irish land in unproductive barrenness, useless to themselves or to any human being. This is not merely a barbarous absurdity; it is a crying grievance—a giant wrong—which cannot be too soon redressed, if it be desired that the people of Ireland should respect the law or attach themselves to the Imperial Legislature.

Is it supposed by any one that the quick-witted peasantry of Ireland cannot reason from these simple premises? Does not their religion teach them that God gave the earth to man to inhabit and cultivate, giving to man at the same time that instinctive desire, which they so strongly feel and exhibit, to obtain his living by its cultivation? Then what must be their sense of the justice, or accordance with the Divine will, of a law which shuts up vast tracts of untouched land from their use, and leaves them to starve, or at best to lounge idly upon it, forbidden to plant a spade in it for the purpose of fulfilling the Divine commandment of gaining their bread from the earth by the sweat of their brow? They must be dull indeed (and Irishmen are proverbially the reverse) who can under such circumstances look on such a law with any other feeling than indignation and hatred! Feelings of this nature in other countries of Europe within very recent periods have generated, you are aware,