ect to the miserable
political and religious tyranny which reigns supreme in Ireland. In the
evidence given before the Land Tenure Committee of 1864, we find the
following statements made by Dr. Keane, the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Cloyne. His Lordship is a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and of
more than ordinary patriotism. He has made the subject of emigration his
special study, partly from a deep devotion to all that concerns the
welfare of his country, and partly from the circumstance of his
residence being at Queenstown, the port from which Irishmen leave their
native shores, and the place where wails of the emigrants continually
resound. I subjoin a few of his replies to the questions proposed:--

"I attribute emigration principally to the want of employment."

"A man who has only ten or twelve acres, and who is a
tenant-at-will, finding that the land requires improvement, is
afraid to waste it [his money], and he goes away. I see many of
these poor people in Queenstown every day."

"I have made inquiries over and over again in Queenstown and
elsewhere, and I never yet heard that a single farmer emigrated and
left the country who had a lease."

Well might Mr. Heron say, in a paper read before the Irish Statistical
Society, in May, 1864: "Under the present laws, no Irish peasant able to
read and write ought to remain in Ireland. If Ireland were an
independent country, in the present state of things there would be a
bloody insurrection in every county, and the peasantry would ultimately
obtain the property in land, as _they have obtained it in Switzerland
and in France_." That the Irish people will eventually become the
masters of the Irish property, from which every effort has been made to
dispossess them, by fair means and by foul, since the Norman invasion of
Ireland, I have not the slightest doubt. The only doubt is whether the
matter will be settled by the law or by the sword. But I have hope that
the settlement will be peaceful, when I find English members of
Parliament treating thus of the subject, and ministers declaring, at
least when they are out of office, that something should be done for
Ireland.

Mr. Stuart Mill writes: "The land of Ireland, the land of every country,
belongs to the people of that country. The individuals called landowners
have no right, in morality or justice, to anything but the rent, or
compensation for its saleable value. When th