What was this system? The landlords let the land-perhaps a strip of bog, barren, wild, dreary. The tenant reclaimed the bog; built, fenced, drained, did all that had to be done.

"In Ireland," said Lord Donoughmore, 'landlords have been in the habit of letting land, not farms "-a very happy description of the Irish landlord system. Well, the tenant converted the "land" into a "farm." "It was the tenants," said Mr. Nassau Senior, "who made the barony of Ferney, which was originally worth £3,000 a year, worth £50,000 a year." And what was the case in Ferney was the case in many another barony in Ireland.

When the tenant had done these things, had made the land tenantable, the rent was raised. He could not pay the increased rental-he had spent himself on

the land; he needed time to recoup himself for his outlay and labour. He got no time: when he failed to pay he was evicted -flung on the roadside, to starve, to die. He took refuge in a Ribbon Lodge, told the story of his wrong, and prayed for vengeance on the man whom he called a tyrant and oppressor. Too often this prayer was heard, and vengeance was wreaked on the landlord or agent, and sometimes on both. That, in brief, is the dismal story of landlord and tenant in Ireland. Lest you may think that I am exaggerating, let me quote the words of an Englishman on the subject.

"The treaty," says Mr. Nassau Senior, "between landlord and tenant in Ireland is not a calm bargain in which the tenant, having offered what he thinks the land worth, cares little whether his offer be

accepted or not; it is a struggle, like the struggle to buy bread in a besieged town, or to buy water in an African caravan." Let me quote another Englishman : “In Ireland," says Lord Normanby, "the landlord has a monopoly of the means of existence, and has a power of enforcing his bargains which does not exist elsewhere-the power of starvation."

These are remarkable words, and give a graphic picture of the deplorable condition of things in Ireland down to a very recent date.

In this country you hear much of Irish outrages of Irish agrarian outragesbut nothing of the causes of these outrages. Let me quote for you the words of an English member of Parliament on the subject. Mr. Poulet Scrope wrote to Sir Robert Peel, in 1844 :

"But for a salutary dread of the Whiteboy Association, ejectments would desolate Ireland, and decimate her population. Yes! the Whiteboy system is the only check on the ejectment system; and weighing one against the other, horror against horror, and crime against crime, it is perhaps the lesser evil of the two." But despite the 'Whiteboy system," the "ejectment system" did “ desolate Ireland," and "decimate her population."

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"Ireland," says Mr. Bright, " is a land of evictions—a word which, I suspect, is scarcely known in any other civilised country." And again, "Ireland is a country from which thousands have been driven by the will of the landlords and the power of the law."

But Englishmen sometimes tell us that, after all, these things were done by

Irishmen by Irish landlords. As soon as England had made up her mind to abandon the Irish landlords she did not spare them. But what says Mr. Bright on this question of the culpability of the Government or of the landlords? "If Ireland were a thousand miles away," he says, "all would be changed; justice would be done, or the landlords would be exterminated by the vengeance of the people." Just so; it was the Government of England that stood between the people of Ireland and justice. If the bayonets of England were not behind the landlords, they would have done justice. to the people long ago.

I have said that the ejectment system decimated the people. "In Ireland," says Mr. Gladstone, "there has been an enormous involuntary emigration."