connexion with England prevented it: therefore England was logically in
the active position of being the cause of all the misery of Ireland.
What, then, was the duty of an English minister? To effect by policy all
the changes which a revolution would do by force." If these words had
been acted upon in 1848, we should not have had a Fenian insurrection in
1867. If a peaceful revolution is to be accomplished a few persons must
suffer, though, in truth, it is difficult to see what Irish landlords
could lose by a fair land law, except the power to exercise a tyrannical
control over their tenants. I believe, if many English absentee
landlords had even the slightest idea of the evil deeds done in their
names by their agents, that they would not tolerate it for a day. If a
complaint is made to the landlord, he refers it to his agent. It is
pretty much as if you required the man who inflicted the injury to be
the judge of his own conduct. The agent easily excuses himself to the
landlord; but the unfortunate man who had presumed to lift up his voice,
is henceforth a marked object of vengeance; and he is made an example to
his fellows, that they may not dare to imitate him. The truth is, that
the real state of Ireland, and the real feelings of the Irish people,
can only be known by personal intercourse with the lower orders.
Gentlemen making a hurried tour through the country, may see a good deal
of misery, if they have not come for the purpose of not seeing it; but
they can never know the real wretchedness of the Irish poor unless they
remain stationary in some district long enough to win the confidence of
the people, and to let them feel that they can tell their sorrows and
their wrongs without fear that they shall be increased by the
disclosure.

Third, one brief word of how this injustice recoils upon the heads of
the perpetrators, and I shall have ended. It recoils upon them
indirectly, by causing a feeling of hostility between the governors and