312 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



supremacy, not to maintain any great principle of religious 

 or civil liberty, but, " in order that landlords may get 

 their rents more securely and more easily ! " And now, 

 whenever the people of Ireland, crowded into towns and 

 on the poorest lands of the west coast, are again starving, 

 the only remedy our landlord-legislators can propose is to 

 ship them off by thousands to other countries, and thus 

 increase and intensify that widespread hatred of English 

 rule which is the natural and just punishment we are 

 receiving for persistent injustice. These deserted villages 

 are not to be again repeopled ; the cattle and sheep must 

 be still allowed to displace Irishmen ; the " easy collection " 

 of the landlords' rents must on no account be endangered ; 

 let everything go on as before, and when our consciences 

 or our fears are aroused by the cry of too many starving 

 Irishmen, let subscriptions be got up, and let the English 

 people be taxed to ship off a few thousands of surplus 

 paupers to Canada or Australia, and all will be well ! 



Here we see pure landlordism having its own way, and 

 working out its natural and inevitable results, in the 

 extreme case of ownership of the soil of the country for 

 the most part by absentees and by aliens in race and 

 religion. About this there can be no dispute. And if the 

 absurd and totally unfounded cry of over-population is 

 always to be followed by more emigration, there can be no 

 end to the process. For even were the population reduced 

 to one million of Irish peasant cultivators, that million 

 would continue in exactly the same condition of misery 

 and destitution as the present population, if they were 

 confined to limited areas and were subjected to the 

 extortions of the agents of absentee or alien landlords. 

 Even before the famine the exorbitant rents and high 

 taxes were paid chiefly by means of exported food, showing 

 that the land of Ireland was able to support many more 

 than the eight millions which then inhabited it. Yet 

 now, when the population has been reduced to less than 

 five millions, the same cry of over-population is raised 

 — as it was a century ago when there were only two 

 millions; and whether there be two or five or eight 

 millions in the country, there will certainly be starvation 



