ms of England, and has in fact grown rich
by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to
her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of
those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the
British Empire. In no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom
English practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land.
In various countries, such as Italy, Russia, France, and the United
States, systems have grown up different from that which has prevailed
in England. Whether the English system or any other may be the
best is not now the question. But in answering that question it is
material to know that Ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two
centuries, has followed that system. The landlord has been to his
tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants
have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much
affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. It has been
the same in England. Questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the
cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in Ireland.
But rents were readily paid up to 1878 and 1879; though abatements
were asked for,--as was the case also in England; and there were
men ready to tell the Irish from time to time, since the days of
O'Connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of
their "ould" properties by the rightful owners.

Then the American revolt, growing out of Smith O'Brien's logic and
physical force, gave birth to Fenianism. The true Fenian I take to be
one desirous of opposing British power, by using a fulcrum placed on
American soil. Smith O'Brien's logic consisted in his assertion that
if his country wished to hammer the British Crown, they could only
do it by using hammers. Smith O'Brien achieved little beyond his own
exile;--but his words, acting upon his followers, produced Fenianism.
That died away, but the spirit remained in America; and when English
tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the
clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and assisted the
views of those American-Irish who had revivified Ribandism and had
given birth to the cry of Home Rule.

During the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series
of beneficial Acts of Parliament, and of consequently ameliorated
circumstances, had befallen the country. I was told the other day by
an Irish Judge, whose name sta