Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/60

57 to carry forward, either through the Poor-law Commission or Guardians, the Board of Works, or other agency, the productive employment of the able-bodied poor requiring relief.

This consideration brings me to the conclusion that not a day ought to be lost in obtaining from Parliament these necessary powers. Whether they should take the form of such a measure as I have long urged upon you for employing the waste labour of Ireland in reclaiming and rendering marketable and cultivable her waste land, may be a question with some. For myself, I can see no resource at all comparable to this, whether in direct and universal applicability to the objects in view, in certainty of remunerative return, in the moderate amount of outlay required, or in its adaptation to the feelings, wants, and social circumstances of the population; and I am borne out in this favourable view of its superior advantages, by the unanswerable mass of evidence condensed in the Digest of the Devon Commission, and the high authority of the strongly expressed opinions of its authors. I need only refer all who entertain doubts on this question to that valuable volume now in circulation, and which cannot be too generally or deeply studied by those who wish to form a sound judgment as to the means of extricating Ireland from the imminent peril that involves her, and with her the empire at large.

I will appeal to but one more authority before I