Ireland is like a child crying out in the pangs of starvation, and you give it opiates in the shape of mischievous enactments (such as the Encumbered Estates Act and the Land Act) which only augment the evil. To use the words of a writer of the day: “_Your Statesmanship knows no policy but that of coercion to-day, concession to-morrow_.” Ireland cries in the pangs of hunger, you alternately beat and coax it. You propose wholesale emigration, which may be compared to bleeding the patient to death in order to cure it of starvation. _Fools!!_ Can’t you see it is dying of hunger? All it wants is food, work, and employment of its labour,--development of its resources. Take away your iniquitous policy of Free Trade,--abolish your unjust enactments, your legalised instruments of confiscation and plunder,--abandon your insane encouragement of internecine war between capital and labour,--desist from your suicidal encouragement to agitation and class antagonism,--encourage capitalists,--protect industries,--employ labour,--and you will soon find Ireland prosperous, contented, and loyal. The cry for Home Rule is a protest against your misrule. If you persist in your insane policy, Ireland must inevitably be depopulated either by starvation or by wholesale emigration.[81] FOOTNOTES: [78] Population in Ireland in 1841 256 per square mile. ” ” 1880 161 ” ” ” Belgium in ” 480 ” ” ” Holland in ” 312 ” ” [79] Population of Ireland in 1841 8,196,597 ” ” ” 1881 5,174,836 --------- Decrease 3,021,761 --------- [80] _s._ _d._ Average rent in Ireland 10 3 per acre. ” ” United Kingdom 19 9 ” ” ” ” France 30 0 ” ” ” ” Belgium 30 0 ” ” ” ” Holland 30 0 ” ” [81] I cannot think that, in a country where four millions of acres of valuable land are calling out pitifully for labour,--where thousands of families of agricultural habits and of laborious instincts are pleading for work and hungering for the tenancy of deserted farms,--where labour is becoming scarce,--where the population is deteriorating in quality by the continued exportation of its strongest and most promising elements; that, in such a country, and under such circumstances, Englishmen should resign themselves to accept the continued banishment of the flower of the population to a foreign land as the best and only means of meeting this great national difficulty. (E. Hart, _Fortnightly Review_, 1883.) CHAPTER XXII. THE FINISHING STROKE.