Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/33

 of our resources. The time was declared by timid persons to be altogether unfit for political action; but history is the safest umpire in such a controversy, and they were reminded that the Catholic Emancipation movement began immediately after a famine.

Some of the practical work accomplished at this time I still recall with satisfaction.

Many of the Irish landlords were practically bankrupt from a long career of extravagance and sloth. An Encumbered Estates Act had been recently passed, establishing a court authorised to sell compulsorily the property of insolvent landowners, and feudal castles and ancient manor houses had fallen before its hammer in every province. In three years a property had been sold, representing a rental of a million and a half, without the smallest advantage to the tenantry, to their detriment indeed, for the new law had altogether disregarded their interest in the soil, and the new proprietors were often more greedy and relentless than the old ones. Thirty nobles of all ranks under a duke, thirty-nine baronets or other titled persons, ten members of Parliament, and as many ex-members were struck down under this decisive law. The price of land fell disastrously, and the purchasers in many cases cleared out the majority of the population to increase the selling price of the property. Help from Parliament there was none, but I bethought me that we might perhaps help ourselves. If estates could be bought at the low rate which then prevailed, and the farms resold to the tenants at the wholesale price, a great good might be extracted out of the social wreck and ruin which prevailed. The most industrious and enterprising of the tenants-at-will might raise themselves to comfort and independence. It was a fascinating idea, but how was it to be realised? There existed at that time throughout England a multitude of Freehold Land Societies created by the Liberal leaders for the purpose of buying land wholesale, and re-selling it in allotments, which in addition to providing a home for industrious artisans would