Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/47

44 and pledged by them for loans and debts—is, notwithstanding, as yet unrecognized by law! So at least run the most recent decisions of the courts.

Can any state of things be more unjust—any more dangerous to the peace of society—any more fatal to the hope of agricultural improvement? Obviously, the first step towards conciliating the attachment of the peasantry to the law, and giving to it that semblance of agreement with right and justice which alone can ensure their respect for and observance of it, must be a measure to give the sanction of law to that which is, and has been for a long time past, the notorious and practical custom of the country.

If this be not done, it is surely hopeless to expect that they will peaceably submit to a law which they have hitherto more or less effectually superseded by a legislation of their own—a law which denies to them those rights they have to a great extent secured to themselves in practice. If this be not done, it is vain to expect to check those agrarian combinations, which, in the words of the land commissioners, "link most occupiers of land in one common and well-understood cause, producing an uniformity of action in resisting the exercise of legal rights," and causing "the mass of the population to sympathise with the perpetrators of crime, and even of murder."

Any promise, therefore, of compensation for fu-