But in answering that question it is material to know that Ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two centuries, has followed that system. The landlord has been to his tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. It has been the same in England. Questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in Ireland. But rents were readily paid up to 1878 and 1879; though abatements were asked for,--as was the case also in England; and there were men ready to tell the Irish from time to time, since the days of O'Connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of their "ould" properties by the rightful owners. Then the American revolt, growing out of Smith O'Brien's logic and physical force, gave birth to Fenianism. The true Fenian I take to be one desirous of opposing British power, by using a fulcrum placed on American soil. Smith O'Brien's logic consisted in his assertion that if his country wished to hammer the British Crown, they could only do it by using hammers. Smith O'Brien achieved little beyond his own exile;--but his words, acting upon his followers, produced Fenianism. That died away, but the spirit remained in America; and when English tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and assisted the views of those American-Irish who had revivified Ribandism and had given birth to the cry of Home Rule. During the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series of beneficial Acts of Parliament, and of consequently ameliorated circumstances, had befallen the country. I was told the other day by an Irish Judge, whose name stands conspicuous among those who are known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a Roman Catholic Judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the laws affecting England and Ireland in reference to each other, he knew no law by which England was specially favoured, though he knew various laws redounding to the benefit of Ireland. When the cry for some relief to suffering Ireland came up, at the time of the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, it was alleged in proof of Ireland's poor condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn wages. I have known Ireland for more than forty years,--say from 1842 to 1882. In 1842 we paid five shillings a week for the entire work of a man. As far as I can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine shillings for the same. The question is not whether five shillings was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as is here declared.