legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, _a fortiori_, commute the average receipts of Irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred that to accepting the conditions proposed.'[150] Assuming, then, the case for compensating the Irish landlords to have been made out, compensation can be afforded without the loss of a shilling to the State. The _bona fide_ encumbrances on their estates, that is, those which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest of from 4 to 5 per cent.; the State could pay off those which were perfectly secure at an interest of 2-1/4 per cent., and could make the landlords chargeable with interest at 3 per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. As for encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the State should only pay off what was well charged; but it should do this on the same conditions; and it should declare hopeless encumbrances extinct. This would be a considerable and just boon to the Irish landlords; the securities taken by the State should be in the form of debentures, which would pass from hand to hand in the market; and many owners of encumbrances would no doubt accept sums less than their full demands, for these, they well know, are at present in danger. I would go, however, farther in relieving the Irish landlords; their estates are subject to a mass of family charges created under a different order of things; if the State has arbitrarily cut down the fund set apart for these, by a wholesale reduction of rents, I cannot understand how it is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in some fair proportion. At all events, I make these suggestions for what they may be worth; if right is to be done to the Irish landed gentry, and a gross breach of public faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind should be extended to them. Very possibly this will not be afforded; but I venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular class cannot be cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without doing injury to all classes, and shaking to their foundations the clear rights of property. And I openly avow that, in my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against the national interest to annihilate this body of men, as must probably happen, should things in Ireland be left as they are. What if they are the heirs of conquest and confiscation in the past? Is that a reason for destroying them after the lapse of centuries, and when England planted them in the land to be her mainstay? What if, in instances, comparatively few in the extreme, they have abused the social trust imposed on them? Was not this because the opportunity was given by law, and was not the law the work of successive Parliaments? Is it not a fact that British ministers, so to