as rebels if they attempted to resist. The
confiscation of Church property in the reign of Henry VIII., added a new
sting to the land grievance, and introduced a new feature in its
injustice. Church property had been used for the benefit of the poor far
more than for the benefit of its possessors. It is generally admitted
that the monks of the middle ages were the best and most considerate
landlords. Thousands of families were now cast upon the mercy of the new
proprietors, whose will was their only law; and a considerable number of
persons were deprived of the alms which these religious so freely
distributed to the sick and the aged. Poverty multiplied fearfully, and
discontent in proportion. You will see, by a careful perusal of this
history, that the descendants of the very men who had driven out the
original proprietors of Irish estates, were in turn driven out
themselves by the next set of colonists. It was a just retribution, but
it was none the less terrible. Banishments and confiscations were the
rule by which Irish property was administered. Can you be surprised that
the Irish looked on English adventurers as little better than robbers,
and treated them as such? If the English Government had made just and
equitable land laws for Ireland at or immediately after the Union, all
the miseries which have occurred since then might have been prevented.
Unfortunately, the men who had to legislate for Ireland are interested
in the maintenance of the unjust system; and there is an old proverb, as
true as it is old, about the blindness of those who do not wish to see.
Irish landlords, or at least a considerable number of Irish landlords,
are quite willing to admit that the existence of the Established Church
is a grievance. Irish Protestant clergymen, who are not possessed by an
anti-Popery crochet--and, thank God, there are few afflicted with that
unfortunate disease now--are quite free to admit that it is a grievance
for a tenant to be subject to ejection by his landlord, _even if he pays
his rent punctually_.

I believe the majority of Englishmen have not the faintest idea of the
way in which the Irish tenant is oppressed, _not by individuals_, for
there are many landlords in Ireland devoted to their tenantry, but by a
system. There are, however, it cannot be denied, cases of individual
oppression, which, if they occurred in any part of Great Britain, and
were publicly known, would raise a storm, from the Land's End t