r the profit of America. There are many who think that it must
therefore be to the injury of England. The question now is whether
the pathetic remonstrance of the tear-laden commissioner should be
allowed to prevail. I say that the tenant who undertakes to pay
for land that which the land will not enable him to pay had better
go,--under whatever pressure.

Let us see how many details, how many improbabilities, will have to
be met before the benevolence of the commissioner can be made to
prevail. The reductions made on the rent average something between
twenty and twenty-five per cent. Let us take them at twenty. If a
tenant has to be evicted for a demand of L10, will he be able to live
in comfort if he pay only L8? Shall one tenant live in comfort on a
farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from L100 to L80, and
another, the reduction having been from L20 to L16? In either case,
if a tenant shall do well with two children, how shall he do with six
or eight? A true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which
may be extracted from a man who drinks. Shall the normal tenant earn
wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? Shall
the idle man be made equal to the industrious,--or can this be done,
or should it be done, by any philanthropy? Statesmen sitting together
in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by
eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which the
world have been brought by long experience will avail more than
eloquence and benevolence. Statesmen may decree that land shall be
let at a certain rate, and the decree will prevail for a time. It
may prevail long enough to put out of gear the present affairs of
the Irish world with which these statesmen will have tampered. But
the long experience will come back, and bargains will again be
made between man and man, though the intervening injuries will be
heartbreaking.

But the benevolence of the Government and its commissioners will
not have gone far. The Land Law of 1881 has, as I now write, been
at work for twelve months, and the results hitherto accomplished
have been very small. It may be doubted whether a single reluctant
tenant,--a single tenant who would have been unwilling to leave his
holding,--has been preserved from American exile by having his L10
or L20 or L30 of rent reduced to L8 or L16 or L24. The commissioners
work slowly, having all the skill of the lawyers, on one side or the
other