Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question stands thus: 12,000 landowners, of foreign origin, possessing almost the whole of the island; 1940 of these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744 holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out into insufficient holdings, and cultivated by 720,000 native farmers, for the most part entirely devoid of capital. The agricultural product of the island, divided between two schedules on the official rolls of the income tax: the first one of £2,691,788 only, representing the income of the 720,000 Irish farmers and their families; the second, of £13,192,758, representing the income of the 12,000 English landlords. The half at least of this sum leaving the island every year, and being spent outside it by the _absentee_ landlords. Not one farthing of this lordly income coming back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the shape of manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements; nor to industry, which is nil. General pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization that stops development of wealth in its germ, and more and more unfits the country for a struggle with the more normally organized nations. Unpaid rents, landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent conflict of interests shown at each term by three or four thousand evictions, without mentioning the still more numerous cases in which eviction is not carried out because it would prove useless. A universal bankruptcy; a chronic state of social war; a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence; the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of the soil and its inhabitants to the savage condition; a constant augmentation in the area of uncultivated land; a regular emigration of the adult and able population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants living at the expense of the ratepayers, either on outdoor relief or in the workhouses; financial grievances, added to historical and political grievances; hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished race; its hatred of the conqueror shown periodically by the return to the House of Commons of 85 members whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular working of the British machinery. Such is the epitome of the results obtained in Ireland by the English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never did history register such a scandalous failure. Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to explain or palliate it, resort to all their scholastic sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured to discover its cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in their ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a sort of “melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged, by the neighbourhood of the ocean (_sic_).