horror at the idea of a landlord
distraining for his unpaid rent. And the individual who delights in
the metropolitan improvements, and glories in the opening of St
Giles's, though it drive thousands of "the suffering poor" at once and
unrecompensed from their miserable abodes, considers the improvement
of an Irish estate as too dearly purchased, if effected by the
expulsion of one ill-conditioned and remunerated ruffian.

But this morbid public opinion only feels for the lawless, the idle,
and overholding tenant; for the landlord it has no sympathy--_he_ may
be robbed of his rights, he may be unable to educate or support his
family, because he cannot obtain his rents, but his sufferings create
no feeling in his favour; his case forms no fact for Lord Devon. The
accomplished, the well-born, and the good, may be driven from the
homes of their ancestors, and reduced to beggary, because the
dishonest occupiers will neither pay their engagements nor surrender
their lands, and no one laments their fate. The gentleman may be
forced to emigrate, and be sent into exile by his necessities, without
any notice being taken of such an event. But let a tenant who has been
profligate, dishonest, and reduced to poverty by his own misconduct,
be dispossessed of the smallest portion of ground on which he eked out
a wretched existence, and which, if he had it in fee, would not be
sufficient to support his family--let such an one be but dispossessed,
and, even though he be afforded the means of emigrating to countries
where land is plenty and wages remunerative, the "Liberal press" will
teem with "the horrors and the cruelties" of "the Irish system!"
Doubtless it would be most desirable that every man should be
possessed of a sufficiency of land, and that he should (if you will)
have it in fee; but how is this to be accomplished? The Irish
population is too dense to be comfortably supported on the extent of
soil which the country possesses, _without_ the assistance of
manufactures; and the conduct of the people, under the guidance of
their leaders, effectually prevents their establishment. There is but
one way, under existing circumstances, by means of which this happy
state could be produced, and that is by following the example of the
French revolutionists, by cutting the throats or otherwise disposing
of the present proprietors, and then selling to the peasantry at the
moderate prices which were formerly fixed on by the Convention.