Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/63

60 She is a partner in the firm, whose prosperity or ruin must involve our own.

I am quite as sanguine as any one of the ultimate benefits which Ireland must derive from the new Poor-law (which indeed are already in many parts of the island, developing themselves precisely in the manner anticipated by the advocates of the measure). But I must end as I began, by declaring that to expect from the Poor-law alone, unaccompanied by other vigorous measures of the character I have pointed out in these letters, the cure of such a complicated amount of mischiefs of long-standing as those under which Ireland now groans, and that at a time when the remedy has been delayed until the failure of the staple food of the people has aggravated tenfold the difficulties of her position, would be a kind of moonstruck madness, of which, as one of the earliest and most persevering advocates of that measure, I am anxious to disown the imputation.

The law indeed, as it passed, contains several defects (against which, as your Lordship knows, I strongly, but in vain, remonstrated), and which must seriously interfere with its successful operation. One, the famous quarter-acre clause, which directly aims at making the law of relief an instrument for clearing estates of the smaller landholders, and thus still further complicates the difficulties of the crisis suddenly dissevering from the occupation of the land (their habitual means of existence)