WHAT WILL DO GOOD IN IRELAND. 233 



In substance it agrees with what I have told as the 

 experience of a life in Ireland, lived not without 

 success. Take the case of one of these small tenants 

 M. de Molmari speaks of, who pays £9 a year. £9 

 a year is 180 shillings, less than 6d. per day ; so 6d. 

 per day would be his total gain if he had his land rent- 

 free. But much the larger number pay less than £5 

 a year rent. Well, £4 :10s. a year is less than 3d. 

 per day — his gain if rent-free. Can such sums alter 

 the tenant's position from poverty to comfort ? Will 

 3d. or 6d. per day added to the means of living of a 

 Connaught small tenant raise him to the wished-for 

 condition ? Any one can tell the answer. Compare 

 the state of these men with my labourers earning 12s. 

 per week, with free houses, garden, and potato-land, 

 and remember that, according to Mr. Gladstone, I 

 signed the death-warrant of many of them when I 

 evicted them long years ago. 



In County Cork the number of the ejectments in 

 the last three years, that have been by creditors, mort- 

 gagees to whom the tenants pledged their farms for 

 money advanced, turns out to be near half the total. 

 These are the direct effect of the tenant's debts and 

 his faults, with which the landlord had nothing to 

 do. The justification of Mr. Forster's Disturbance 

 BiU was the cruelty of landlords in ejecting tenants 

 in these bad times. Here is the answer. 



Again, in tliis same letter, M. de Molinari de- 

 scribes what will necessarily happen if these bad 



