204 My Little Farm 



position of the " relieved " peasant is impossible ; 

 make his position possible, and the landlord must 

 be plundered by statute. Crafts of Parliament 

 may modify shocks and compromise conflicts from 

 time to time, but the essential problem remains 

 until the Irish agrarian learns how to make land 

 productive, which can never be without educa- 

 tional reform and possibilities of free mind inside 

 Ireland. This is the fundamental difficulty with 

 all Irish problems, the essential reason why the 

 processes of progress, elsewhere effective through- 

 out the world, remain impracticable to most 

 of the agrarians in Ireland. 



After all the State expenditure, congestion 

 remains. The statistics of acreage show no 

 substantial enlargement. Yet the plea for pity 

 is dropped. We hear no more of the " and not 

 fit to rear snipe." Now that the special pleaders 

 control the Imperial purse, the less said about 

 the victims of congestion the better. 



