land of Ireland was not in possession of the people of Ireland, no repeal or other measure purely political would avail. If the landlords were to remain (and Lalor had no desire to expel them if they were willing to submit to the paramount right of the nation) they must accept their titles to whatever rights should be theirs from the Irish nation and the Irish nation only. "The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this" (he wrote) "that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of Ireland; that they, and none but they, are the landowners and lawmakers of this island; that all laws are null and void not, made by them, and all titles to land invalid not conferred and confirmed by them; and that this full right of ownership may and ought to be asserted and enforced by any and all means which God has put in the power of man." The coming of the lean years culminating in the Famine had taught Lalor the overwhelming importance of the question: "A revolution is beginning to begin which will leave Ireland _without a people_ unless it be met and conquered by a revolution which will leave it without landlords." Failure to observe (or to see the importance of) the land question had led to the defeat of Mitchel and Smith O'Brien. "They wanted an alliance with the landowners. They chose to consider them as Irishmen, and imagined they could induce them to hoist the green flag. They wished to preserve an Aristocracy. They desired, not a democratic, but merely a national revolution. Who imputes blame to them for this? Whoever does so will not have me to join him. I have no feeling but one of respect for the motives that caused reluctance and delay. That delay, however, I consider as a matter of deep regret. Had the Confederation, in the May or June of '47, thrown heart and mind and means and might into the movement I pointed out, they would have made it successful, and settled at once and for ever all quarrels and questions between us and England." But though Lalor insisted on the importance of the question of the ownership of the soil and confessed complete indifference to Repeal, an indifference which he claimed was largely shared by the people of Ireland (for Repeal, as he said, the Irish wolf dog "will never bite, but only bark") he was a land reformer, not out of a lack of interest in political questions, but out of an intense belief in the realities of politics. He never joined the Repealers, partly because O'Connell and his following disgusted him; as he says in a letter to Gavan Duffy: "Before I embarked in the boat I looked at the crew and the commander; the same boat which you and others mistook in '43 for a war frigate because she hoisted gaudy colours and that her captain swore terribly. I knew her at once for a leaky collier-smack, with a craven crew to man her, and a sworn dastard and a foresworn traitor at the