ment whatever, whether by drainage, reclaiming waste land, or
building, or by adopting better agricultural methods. In every case, his
increase of labor, of foresight and energy, would have met with but one
reward: when the time came to renew the lease, he would have been told
that his land had doubled in value during the year, and that he must,
therefore, pay twice as much for the privilege of tilling it. If he
refused, he at once forfeited every claim to the fruit of his own work,
the whole of his improvements becoming the property of the land owner.

The cultivators, as an inevitable consequence, lost every incentive to
labor, energy, foresight and the moral qualities which are fostered by
honestly rewarded work. They worked as little as possible on their
farms, and the standard of cultivation steadily declined, while the mode
of living grew perpetually worse. If it were intended to reduce a whole
population to hopeless poverty, no better or more certain way could
be imagined.

The steady lowering of the arts of cultivation, the restriction of
crops, the tendency to keep as close as possible to the margin of
sustenance, thus zealously fostered, opened the way for the disastrous
famine of 1846 and 1847, which marks the beginning of a rapid decline in
population,--a decrease which has never since been checked. The
inhabitants of Ireland shortly before the famine numbered considerably
over eight millions. Since that time, there has been a decrease of about
four millions--a thing without parallel in Christendom.

The amendment of the land-laws, which were directly responsible for
these evil results, was by no means initiated in consequence of the
famine. It was due wholly to a great national agitation, carried out
under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, which led to the
land-acts of 1881 and 1887. These new laws at last guaranteed to the
cultivator the fruit of his toil, and guarded him against arbitrary
increase of the tax levied on him by the "owner" of the land. But they
did not stop here; they initiated a principle which will finally make
the cultivator absolute owner of his land, and abolish the feudal class
with their rights of private taxation. This cannot fail to react on
England, so that the burdens of the Angles and Saxons will at last be
lifted from their shoulders, as a result of the example set them by the
Gaels, for generations working persistently, and persistently advancing
towards their goal.