Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/56

53 net-work of legal settlements, trusts, and liabilities, which now incapacitate their nominal owners from either undertaking improvements themselves, or offering such terms as may induce other parties to effect them.

Instead, therefore, of dwelling on this thoroughly recognized necessity, I will avail myself of probably the last letter I shall presume to address to you on the wants of Ireland, to say a few words in reference to her prospects for the coming winter.

It has pleased the Almighty (for which we have recently offered up our thanksgivings at your Lordship's instance) to allow the Irish people to gather in an abundant harvest. It remains for you to determine whether that people (for whom, no doubt, the bounty was intended by Providence) are to be preserved thereby from a repetition of the horrible sufferings of last year; or that it shall merely go to save the bankrupt landlords of that country for one year longer from the necessity of compounding with their creditors, while their tenants and poor are left to starve (as so many starved last year), or are rescued from starvation only by a demoralizing mode of relief from the national exchequer.

It is true the Poor-law of last session professes to enact that the destitution of any district shall in future be relieved at the cost of its property. But will you take the necessary precautions to ensure the practical working of that principle? If that be your determination, my Lord (and I do not scruple