practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent of land
lying waste. In 1819, in 1823, in 1826, and in 1830, select committees
inquired into and reported on drainage, reclamation of bogs and
marshes, on roads, fisheries, emigration, and other schemes for giving
employment to the redundant population that had been encouraged to
increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war
prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the
forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. When, by the
Emancipation Act in 1829, the forty-shilling franchise was abolished,
the peasant lost his political value. After the war, when the price of
corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing,
labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that
must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung
out to wither on the highway. Then came Lord Devon's Land Commission,
which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine.
The Irish population was now at its highest figure--between eight and
nine millions. Yet, though there had been three bad seasons, it was
clearly proved at that time that by measures which a wise and willing
legislature would have promptly passed, the whole surplus population
could have been profitably employed.

In this great land controversy, on which side lies the truth? Is it
the fault of the people, or the fault of the law, that the country is
but half cultivated, while the best of the peasantry are emigrating
with hostile feelings and purposes of vengeance towards England? As
to the landlords, as a class, they use their powers with as much
moderation and mercy as any other class of men in any country ever
used power so vast and so little restrained. The best and most
indulgent landlords, the most genial and generous, are unquestionably
the old nobility, the descendants of the Normans and Saxons, those