English history is pretty much a history of struggles against monopolies of one kind and another. There is no monopoly, it seems to me, which bears such evil fruit as the monopoly of all the land of a country in the hands of a few. It is bad for the country, bad for the people, and bad for the landlords, whether the monopolists are honorable companies, a landed aristocracy, or an ecclesiastical corporation. God's-law, which is the law of our faith, shows plainly how the Great Lawgiver regards the monopoly of land by the care which He took to have a direct interest in the land of Canaan by personal inheritance for every Jew. To guard against the might of greed, to prevent the poor of the land, touched by misfortune or snared by debt, from sinking into farm laborers or serfs of the soil he instituted the year of jubilee when every man returned to his inheritance. I first thought over these things in connection with the land question in Ireland when travelling there and seeing the evils arising from the existing tenure of land. I met with testimony everywhere of how often and how fatally the will of a lord interfered to prevent prosperity. There might have been a seam of coal opened in Antrim but for one landlord. In the present depressed state of the linen trade what a boon that would have been to the country. There might have been ship-building on the Foyle, to the great benefit of Derry and her people, but for the absentee landlords, the London companies. Donegal might have had a coal mine opened, but the landlord would neither open it himself nor let anyone else do it, and yet the great want of Donegal is employment for her people. I did not think for a moment that the landlords of Ireland were, as a rule, naturally worse than other men, but they have too much power, and when "self the wavering balance shakes, it's rarely right adjusted." I blame the system, not the men. There were and are landlords in Ireland too noble to abuse their power, of which class the Earl of Belmore is an illustrious example; but these men are noble in spite of the system which afforded every facility for the enormities of Lord Leitrim.