iod; and he
expressed his views in public on several occasions. His great anxiety
was for united action. In a letter written from Darrynane, dated 17th of
September, and addressed to the Secretary of the National Repeal
Association, he says, the system of public works is, in its nature,
sufficiently comprehensive, if carried actively and energetically into
effect, to afford employment to the great bulk of the adult population;
but he feels convinced, that to be satisfactory it requires the most
active co-operation of landowners and farmers. The great difficulty, he
thinks, is not in want of employment, but in the want of food, and to
leave to commercial speculators the supply of food for the people will
keep it at a famine price. In his opinion, therefore, the intervention
of the Government was absolutely necessary. Such intervention, he admits
to be surrounded with great difficulties, and calculated to impose an
enormous additional burthen upon them; it must, however, he holds, be
done, or the people will starve. In reply to those who called for loans,
at a low rate of interest, to be expended on the improvement of the
land, he says, it is to be remarked that there are already a million of
pounds sterling in the hands of the Board of Works, to be lent for the
drainage of Irish estates, and but few had availed themselves of that
fund.[133]

But this is no complete answer to the call made for reclaiming Irish
lands, because the money held by the Board of Works was only lent when
applied for. The advocates for reclaiming waste lands in order to give
employment to the starving people wanted a Special Bill empowering the
Government to call upon the owners of estates either to reclaim their
waste land themselves, or to permit the Government to do so on equitable
terms. To some this seemed an interference with the rights of property;
but even if it were, the occasion was sufficient to justify it; for when
a whole nation is in the throes of famine--threatened with annihilation,
as Ireland then was--_salus populi suprema lex_ should become the
guiding principle of a government. Extraordinary evils call for
extraordinary remedies. Nor would such a law be one whit more of an
interference with the rights of property than the law which enables a
railway company to make their line through a man's estate whether he
likes it or not, giving him such compensation as may be awarded by an
impartial tribunal. And this is just, for no priva