Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/36

33 particular districts on waste lands which at present scarcely produce the means of sustenance, or are suited for human habitations. This change would be alike advantageous to the lands from whence the settlers are taken, and to those on which they may hereafter be fixed, and may facilitate the means of introducing a comfortable yeomanry and an improved agriculture in the more fertile districts. The severe pressure of the system of clearing farms and ejecting sub-tenants may thus be mitigated and the general state of the peasantry improved."

If considered by the Commissioners so expedient in 1836, how far more necessary must such a measure be now, when the potato failure, by destroying the "con-acre" system, has multiplied in a vast degree the number of labourers vainly seeking employment, and the Poor-law of last session, with its quarter-acre-clause, promises to put an end also to cottier holdings, and add further myriads to the same ranks.

It is vain to hope that these vast numbers can be absorbed at once by "private enterprise," however encouraged by loans, or stimulated by poor-rates. Railways and colonization will be equally inadequate to dispose of the surplus of labour in the market, even if they for a moment could be compared with the reclamation of the wastes, in point of productiveness, facilities of direct application, or general benefit.

But I appeal to yet stronger and more recent au-