"The truth is," says Mr. Chaplin, from his place in the House of Commons, "that the English Parliament and the English people are mainly responsible for those conditions of the country which have driven the people to the land, and the land alone, for their support. It was not always so; there were other industries in Ireland in former days, which flourished, and flourished to a considerable extent, until they first aroused, and were afterwards suppressed by, the selfish fears and commercial jealousy of England--England, who was alarmed at a rivalry and competition that she dreaded at the hands and from the resources and energy of the Irish people."[4] "I am convinced that it is in the history of these cruel laws that lies the secret of that fatal competition for the land, in which--and it may well be a just retribution upon us--the source of all the troubles and all the difficulties that you have to deal with will be found."[5] "To understand the Irish land question of to-day," writes Sir C. Russell, the present Attorney-General for England, "it is necessary to look back. I have no desire needlessly to rake up bygone wrongs. I wish to Heaven the Irish people could forget the past. For them it is in the main a melancholy retrospect. But England ought not to forget the past--until, at least, a great act of reparation has been done. Even among men of some education in England, remarkable ignorance of the evil wrought in past times by England towards Ireland prevails. There is, indeed, a vague general impression that in very remote times England, when engaged in the endeavour to conquer Ireland, was guilty of cruelties, as most conquering nations are, but that those things have done very little harm; that their effects have ceased to tell, and that the only purpose served by keeping alive their memory is to irritate the temper of the Irish people and prompt them to look back rather than look forward. Emphatically I say this is not so. The effects have not ceased. It is not too much to say that Ireland and Irishmen of to-day are such as English government has made them." Sir Charles Russell then proceeds to place foremost among "the agencies employed by England which have left enduring evil marks upon Ireland," "the direct legislation avowedly contrived to hinder the development of Irish commerce and manufactures."[6]