ntage of the tenants have unfortunately been too little considered
by Parliament. The result is that you have bad farming, bad
dwelling-houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the
occupation and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results--a
result the most appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your
country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to
refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion
of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized with any
scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government.
He said further that the people here are rather in the country than of
it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder
at that statement. You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his window open towards
Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn
their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations
of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say then
that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but desperate
as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if the people and
Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to apply it....

I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in all
countries a general grievance and general suffering. The surface of
society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recollect in the
poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in
vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its banks, he observed the
constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his good instructor
and guide explained to him the cause of it:--

"This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."

And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and the
wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a