fficient to satisfy men who,
according to Mr Maher's sworn testimony, "_desire no such improvements,
even when they are paid promptly for their execution_;" or that drainage
will be effected, in the hope of their being allowed a paltry
consideration in case they are dispossessed, "_by persons who threaten
with death those who are willing to give them at once the full value of
their labour_?" Not a bit of it. Any attempt to legislate on the subject
will only increase the present difficulties. If you give the tenant a
right to execute such improvements as he pleases, and guarantee him
remuneration, who is to be the umpire between the occupier and the
landlord?--"a commissioner." Well, where are you to get respectable men
to act in such a capacity, with the certainty that if they decided
honestly, they would become unpopular, and secure the reward of death?
And if you take those commissioners from the class of small farmers, and
pay them by the business they transact, why, then, there will be no
limit to jobbing and dishonesty--each of them will bid for popularity
and increase of income, by deciding in favour of the tenant, and against
the landlord, in all instances--and litigation and confusion without end
will be the consequence. As to Mr O'Connell's other remedies--extension
of municipal reform, and increase of representation--grant them, and
what could the change effect? No extension of municipal reform can
possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are--with
one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles
prevail in all. They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more
would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him?
And as to the increase in the Irish representation, what benefit could
that be to the country, when, admitting that the number of members were
increased, the additional ones would only swell the amount of those who
altogether, and purposely, absent themselves from their duties, under
the sanction of their constituents, and by the express dictation of
their leader.

With the facts which we have laid before them--with the proofs which we
have adduced from their own authorities, to show that there is neither
injustice nor oppression practised on the Irish people, that their
distress is to a great extent simulated, and their poverty the fruits of
their own misconduct--we ask the government, will they continue to allow
themselves to be misled