d to a refusal. They said proper
security could not be had for the advancement of the money; they
therefore resolved not to make any advances to Irish Railways, except in
the ordinary way, namely, by application to the Exchequer Loan
Commissioners, when fifty per cent of the subscribed capital would be
paid up. Could they not have made railways themselves, as they were
afterwards almost compelled to do by Lord George Bentinck, in which case
they would have had something for their money?

The landlords also made a demand which must be regarded as a fair one:
it was that all who received incomes from the land should be taxed for
the relief of the people. This was pointed at absentees, but still more
at mortgagees.

The Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, a society mainly
representing landlord and aristocratic views, of which the Duke of
Leinster was president, took up, as became it, the great labour question
of the moment. A deputation from that body waited on the Lord
Lieutenant, on the 25th of September, and laid its views before his
Excellency. The members of the deputation open the interview at the
Viceregal Lodge by enunciating the good and sound principle, "that it is
the clear and imperative duty of the possessors of property in Ireland,
to avert from their poor fellow-countrymen the miseries of famine; and
that they, therefore, willingly acquiesce in the imposition upon them of
any amount of taxation necessary for that purpose." They go on to say,
that as a very large sum must be raised on the security of Irish
property, and expended upon labour, during the continuance of the
distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop, the expenditure
of this sum upon unproductive works will increase the disproportion
already existing between labour and capital in the country; which
disproportion they look on as the main cause of the want of employment
for the people, and of the miserable wages they are sustained by.
Reproductive work, they continue, is the only work on which the labour
of the population ought to be employed, and plenty of such work was to
be found in every part of the country. It would improve the soil, and
return the ratepayers a large interest for the capital expended. The
Board of Works, they suggest, might be empowered to postpone the public
works ordered by the presentment sessions, whenever they saw fit, and
also to suspend the portion of money voted for that purpose on any
townland, and hav