d to feed and clothe their slaves; in Ireland, it
quite depends on the will of the proprietor whether he will let his
lands to his tenants on terms which will enable them to feed their
families on the coarsest food, and to clothe them in the coarsest
raiment If a famine occurs--and in some parts of Ireland famines are of
annual occurrence--the landlord is not obliged to do anything for his
tenant, but the tenant _must_ pay his rent. I admit there are humane
landlords in Ireland; but these are questions of fact, not of feeling.
It is a most flagrant injustice that Irish landlords should have the
power of dispossessing their tenants if they pay their rents. But this
is not all; although the penal laws have been repealed, the power of the
landlord over the conscience of his tenant is unlimited. It is true he
cannot apply bodily torture, except, indeed, the torture of starvation,
but he can apply mental torture. It is in the power of an Irish landlord
to eject his tenant if he does not vote according to his wishes. A man
who has no conscience, has no moral right to vote; a man who tyrannizes
over the conscience of another, should have no legal right. But there is
yet a deeper depth. I believe you will be lost in amazement at what is
yet to come, and will say, as Mr. Young said of penal laws in the last
century, that they were more "fitted for the meridian of Barbary." You
have heard, no doubt, of wholesale evictions; they are of frequent
occurrence in Ireland--sometimes from political motives, because the
poor man will not vote with his landlord; sometimes from religious
motives, because the poor man will not worship God according to his
landlord's conscience; sometimes from selfish motives, because his
landlord wishes to enlarge his domain, or to graze more cattle. The
motive does not matter much to the poor victim. He is flung out upon the
roadside; if he is very poor, he may die there, or he may go to the
workhouse, but he must not be taken in, even for a time, by any other
family on the estate. The Irish Celt, with his warm heart and generous
impulses, would, at all risks to himself, take in the poor outcasts, and
share his poverty with them; but the landlord could not allow this. The
commission of one evil deed necessitates the commission of another. An
Irish gentleman, who has no personal interest in land, and is therefore
able to look calmly on the question, has been at the pains to collect
instances of this tyranny, i