Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/200

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192
Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.

much to put down great armies and the peril and suffering of war."

I should be wanting in my duty in the publication of a chapter headed "Landlords," if I did not at least make an effort, however inadequate, to delineate a class of the species "Landlords" which has produced some specimens that may well call for the astonishment, if not the admiration of mankind. I have attempted to give in the third section of the next chapter some very imperfect notes of the treatment which the people of Scotland receive from their landlords. I will here give one or two examples of the treatment the people of Ireland have received from their landlords. In Scotland the relation of landlord and tenant may, in some cases, be very unsatisfactory, but its effects do not manifest themselves much beyond the sphere of their immediate action. In Ireland the relation of landlords and tenants is such as to produce the most disagreeable effects to the inhabitants of Great Britain who reap none of the profits obtained by the landlords of Ireland, and consequently reap nothing but loss and ignominy, while the landlords of Ireland reap all the profit and all the honour, if honour it can be called.

The inhabitants of Ireland have taken up a deep