could, the hundreds and thousands of
tenants had not a straw of capital. This peculiarity in social
circumstances made it certain, therefore, that if the moral foundation of
modern ideas of property is that he who sows shall reap, the idea of
property would grow up in the mind of the cultivator, whenever the outer
climate permitted the growth in his mind of any ideas of moral or
equitable right at all.

In 1843 the Devon Commission had reported that it is the tenant who has
made the improvements; that large confiscations of these improvements had
been systematically practised in the shape of progressive enhancements of
rent; that crime and disorder sprang from the system; and that parliament
ought to interfere. A bill was proposed by the Peel government in 1845 for
protecting the rightful interests of the tenant against the landlord. It
was introduced in the House mainly composed of landlords. There it had
such contumelious greeting, that it was speedily dropped. This was a
crowning illustration of the levity of the imperial parliament dealing
with Irish problems. The vital necessity for readjusting the foundations
of social life demonstrated; a half measure languidly attempted; attempt
dropped; bills sent to slumber in limbo; dry rot left quietly alone for a
whole generation, until bloody outrage and murder awoke legislative
conscience or roused executive fear. The union was seventy years old
before the elementary feature in the agrarian condition of Ireland was
recognised by the parliament which had undertaken to govern Ireland.
Before the union Ireland was governed by the British cabinet, through the
Irish landed gentry, according to their views, and in their interests.
After the union it was just the same. She was treated as a turbulent and
infected province within the larger island; never as a community with an
internal economy peculiarly her own, with special sentiments, history,
recollections, points of view, and necessities all her own. Between the
union and the year 1870, Acts dealing with Irish land had been passed at
Westminster. Every one of these Acts was in the interest of the landlord
and against the tenant. A score of Insurrection Acts, no Tenant-right Act.
Meanwhile Ireland had gone down into the dark gulfs of the Famine
(1846-7).

Anybody can now see that the true view of the Irish cultivator was to
regard him as a kind of copyholder or customary freeholder, or whatever
other name best fits a man who