An 
 
 |«XI 
 
THE IRISH LAND QUESTION: 
 
 NY 
 
 JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS, M.P. 
 
 A LETTER WRITTEN IN SEPT., IS69, 
 
 TO 
 
 THE LATE SIR JOHN GRAY, M.P. 
 
 “ Arma lenonti 
 Omnia dat, qui justa negat.” 
 
 OXFORD: 
 
 PRINTED BY E. C, ALDEN, 35 CORN-MARKET STREET. 
 1881 . 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 I have reprinted this letter from The Freeman's 
 Journal , in which it originally appeared, partly be¬ 
 cause it represents the impressions which I gathered 
 during a summer tour in Ireland, and was written at 
 my friend the late Sir John Gray’s request; partly 
 because the causes of discontent which I collected 
 then have grown into social rebellion; partly because 
 the remedies which I suggested at the time (which 
 procured me an invitation to sit for the County 
 of Tipperary), are now acknowledged by very many 
 persons to be the sole cure for Irish discontent. I 
 wonder when English statesmen will recognise the 
 worth of tho warning which the Roman poet gives, 
 and I use as my motto. I may add that, except a 
 few errors of the press, I have withstood the tempta¬ 
 tion of altering my letter of 1869 in any particular. 
 
 James E. Tiiorold Rogers. 
 
 Dec. 1 5th, 1880. 
 
THE IRISII LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Oxford, Sept. 28th, 1869. 
 
 My Dear Sir John Gray, 
 
 I have no wish to obtrude any opinions of my own about 
 the Irish Land Question on your attention ; but as I have 
 thought a great deal on the subject, both from a political 
 and economical point of view; as I have no personal interest 
 near or remote in its settlement, beyond that of a well- 
 wisher to your island, as an integral part of our common 
 country; as I am neither landlord, tenant, nor partisan; as 
 I paid during my late visit to Ireland minute attention to 
 what I heard and saw on all sides, over the limited area of 
 country to which I designedly confined my observations ; 
 and as we had a long and interesting, and (to me) instruc¬ 
 tive conversation on the subject, I have thought it worth 
 while to trespass on your patience by giving you some of 
 my impressions while they are at the freshest. 
 
 You will perhaps allow me to indulge so much to British 
 or Saxon feeling as to put what appears to be our case 
 first. Opinions strongly entertained among you Irishmen, 
 and as persistently avowed, are strange to our habits of 
 life and thought; though if people would only discuss the 
 question dispassionately, they might see in the almost 
 universal agreement among the Irish, a strong prima facie 
 argument in favour of the solidity of the opinions enter¬ 
 tained by you, and a reason why the claims put forward 
 should receive careful and, in some degree, sympathetic 
 attention, instead of being met, as they frequently are, by 
 wild imputations of communism and confiscation. 
 
6 
 
 Our case, then, from my point of view is as follows:— 
 The social condition of Ireland is a scandal, and a scandal 
 of the gravest kind. No amount of bluster on the part of a 
 section of the London papers is sufficient to hide the fact that 
 the disaffection of the Irish people is deep-seated and lasting ; 
 that the country is in many particulars one of the most 
 backward in Europe, and that from no fault of the Irish; 
 that forty years of political emancipation have not reconciled 
 the Irish to political union with England; and that the 
 necessity of a thorough identity of all public interests as 
 between the various parts of the United Kingdom is not as 
 yet appreciated by the Irish people. I am not, of course, 
 referring to the foolish rant of some among your so-called 
 national papers. Nor do I expect that the memory of 
 outrageous wrong can be got rid of in a few years, or by 
 one or two acts of considerate legislation. I know that 
 Ireland was for many years governed by a sect and a caste, 
 and I am quite aware that the public judgment of a nation 
 is permanently deteriorated by such a bad system of 
 government. But Ireland has political liberty, and (late 
 enough) religious equality, and need not in any way sacrifice 
 its national identity by the closest possible union and amity 
 with that strong country with which its political being is 
 necessarily united. Still I cannot conceal the fact from 
 myself, that, however much may be hoped for in the future, 
 there is no real unity between the nations. 
 
 Again, the dissatisfaction of the Irishman at home leads to 
 grave complications abroad. The prejudices or antipathies 
 of the Irish emigrant are carried to America and the 
 colonies, and disturb the peace of these countries, or supply 
 the materials on which political adventurers may work. I 
 know no other example in history in which voluntary 
 emigration has been accompanied by feelings of lasting 
 bitterness towards the political institutions which the 
 emigration has abandoned. The Irish Americans entertain 
 sentiments towards this country which, making all allowance 
 for the exaggerated language of furious or interested par- 
 
7 
 
 tisans, rather resemble those of the ruined exiles of the 
 Italian Republics of the middle ages than those of voluntary 
 emigrants and prosperous colonists. I entertain, and I 
 believe entertain in common with every man of sense, the 
 heartiest contempt towards the firebrands of American 
 Fenianism; but I know that there is no use in spurring a 
 dead horse, and that therefore these men know the opinions 
 entertained by the rank and file of their followers or their 
 dupes, and, knowing, are able to make themselves a 
 nuisance to us and to the country of their adoption. 
 
 Next, I feel that, economically and financially, the govern¬ 
 ment of Ireland is a failure. The British Government 
 keeps, I am told, on an average 30,000 troops in Ireland. 
 Everybody admits that the maintenance of the British army 
 is a charge of 100/. per man. It also catches (not over- 
 creditably, and therefore expensively,) and trains these men 
 at a charge of 100/. a piece more. Assuming the average 
 length of military service to be ten years, here is an annual 
 military expenditure of nearly 4,000,000/. Besides this, the 
 Government pays 718,000/., or thereabouts, out of the 
 imperial revenue towards the charges of the Irish Con¬ 
 stabulary. I say nothing of the navy charges which, in 
 proportion, would doubtlessly swell this amount. But the 
 average revenue from Ireland is less than 7,000,000/. 
 
 I take it that this vast cost of a military and quasi military 
 establishment is incurred mainly in order to guarantee the 
 landlords’ rent. One offence excepted, crime in Ireland, 
 the people being excitable and hot-tempered, is less than in 
 England. Crimes against property are few, and convictions 
 are proportionally less than in England; for while the 
 population of Ireland to England and Wales is, roughly 
 speaking, as one to four, the convictions are little more than 
 as one to eight. This vast military establishment may be 
 absolutely necessary; but its raison d’etre can be found only 
 in the necessity of maintaining some exceptional system. 
 If so, and this be, as I feel sure it is, the land system, and 
 if the whole property in Ireland assessed under schedule A, 
 
8 
 
 amounts to about 14,500,000/., whereof half may, perhaps, 
 be the rent of purely agricultural land, the cost of securing 
 the collection of eight millions rent is near five millions for 
 police, military and civil. 
 
 The process, then, of governing Ireland is very unsatis¬ 
 factory and exceedingly costly. If the Legislature were to 
 couple the concession of tenant right at a fixed rent on the 
 part of the landowner, with the grant of an additional ten 
 per cent, to the Irish landlords from the Exchequer, the 
 precedent would be ugly, but the economy would be im¬ 
 mediate and great. 
 
 I find that the landlord in Ireland does, as a rule, nothing 
 for his land. I have in my short Irish tour collected many 
 and in some cases whimsical instances of this rule. But I 
 never yet heard of any jurist or economist who doubted 
 that the grant of ownership in the soil was based on the 
 fact that without such ownership no one could gather the 
 fruits of his outlay. If, however, the owner makes no out¬ 
 lay he cannot be wronged if, full compensation being made 
 for the present value of his interest, some other person who 
 does make the outlay reaps his own fruits. And this, 
 without any avowal of the principle stated above, is what 
 the Irish tenant claims. He knows that every penny piece 
 of rent which he pays has been as a rule derived from the 
 growth of a population to which the landlord, being for the 
 most part an absentee, does not contribute any increase, 
 and from the outlay of capital and the exercise of skill, for 
 which again no thanks are due to the landowner. 
 
 It is idle to speak of this movement as one against pro¬ 
 perty. On the contrary, it is a movement in favour of 
 property. The Irish landowners occupy a position closely 
 analogous to that of the former owners of tithe, and their 
 reduction to the status of the recipient of a rent-charge, if 
 it can be shown to be expedient, cannot be objected to on 
 the ground of justice. Everybody allows that the radical 
 objection to a tithe on produce is, that it taxes unequal 
 profits at equal rates. But in what particular does the 
 
9 
 
 Irish landowners’ rent differ, except in form, from such a 
 tithe, when the basis of an increased rent is the improve¬ 
 ment effected by the skill of the tenant ? The Irish farmers 
 claim that they are robbed of their property under the 
 forms of law; and they are informed, forsooth, that they 
 are assailing the rights of property when they seek to 
 defend their own. I need not tell you that an unjust and 
 oppressive law is ■worse than violence, because such a law 
 demoralises the society for the sake of which laws are 
 created and respected. 
 
 The demand for land in a purely agricultural country is 
 always excessive. A farmer who loses his land becomes at 
 once a day labourer of the worst paid kind. And, again, 
 there is no occupation from which a man extricates his 
 capital with greater loss than from ordinary arable farming. 
 And when the scarcity of land is enhanced by the mis¬ 
 chievous feudal custom of primogeniture, and the more 
 mischievous permission to settle land for an unborn genera¬ 
 tion, the natural evil is increased by artificial evils. 
 
 To talk, in the midst of this exaggerated insecurity under 
 which the property of the tenant labours, about the occa¬ 
 sional and exceptional virtue of some particular landowner, 
 is sheer impertinence. There is a trick which English 
 magnates indulge in, of speaking about improvements which 
 they make on their property, as though these were exercises 
 of heroic virtue, and worthy of their tenants’ heartfelt 
 gratitude. Perhaps they are with such people; but a 
 builder may as reasonably put on his tombstone the number 
 of houses which he had constructed. Scattered about in 
 Ireland you may have a few improving landowners. I dare 
 say there are parishes in Ireland where the Episcopalians 
 far outnumber the Roman Catholics. But would any 
 sensible person have ever hinted at so exceptional a cir¬ 
 cumstance as a reason for continuing the Establishment? 
 
 The tenants admit that their condition has improved, and 
 that there has not been, on the whole, a rise in rents for 
 the last twenty years. But they add that this is easily 
 
10 
 
 explained. Up to these latter days of agitation the tenant 
 was ground down pitilessly to the lowest margin of bare 
 subsistence. Besides they have now poor rates to pay, and 
 vastly increased wages. For you are aware that the Irish 
 labourer, though far from being plentifully paid, is much 
 better off than he was twenty years ago. Now I find that 
 it is from this class that the greatest amount of emigration 
 has proceeded. 
 
 It may be from an anticipated improvement in their altered 
 condition, or from sympathy with what they believe to be 
 an Irish cause, that the labourers are as anxious for fixity 
 of tenure as the farmers are. The inhabitants of the towns, 
 as you know, are equally eager for a change. They believe 
 that the produce of Irish land would be speedily doubled if 
 the tenant could reap where he has sown, or be encouraged 
 to sow by securing him the fruits of his labour in harvest. 
 I suspect that their instincts are rational. I wish that those 
 noble lords who are so urgent about the rights of property, 
 meaning by this the landowners’ rent, could extend their 
 sympathies towards protecting the tenants’ outlay. I fancy 
 that capital and labour are more sacred than rent, because 
 more essential to a nation’s happiness, as a cause is more 
 important than an effect. 
 
 Everybody admits that the Irish agriculturist is dis¬ 
 satisfied. I put it strongly, but in a phrase which I think 
 represents little more than the truth, when I say that the 
 whole population is an accomplice after the fact in agrarian 
 outrage, though otherwise deliberate crimes against per¬ 
 sons and property are very rare in Ireland. Now, the 
 Irish must be of the same habits and feelings as the English, 
 or they must have permanently different peculiarities of 
 character. If they are alike, it is plain that they must 
 suffer under some grievous wrong, to which their English 
 and Scotch fellow-subjects are not liable; if they differ, 
 there is abundant reason why a land system, in spite of 
 which the other two kingdoms grow wealthy, should be 
 altered in Ireland, where it notoriously causes disaffection, 
 
11 
 
 scandal, and bloodshed. Now it is admitted by Lord 
 Clarendon that the full exaction of a landlord’s legal rights 
 in Ireland is felonious. What a pity that this form of felony 
 has been so long protected by the legislature ! 
 
 Ireland must for many a long day be agricultural. It 
 must be a country of small holdings. But it must, in order 
 to obviate disaffection, obtain fixity or security of tenure 
 for the agriculturist. It is plain that agriculture is de¬ 
 pressed when the only person who invests capital in the 
 soil is discouraged from such an investment by the uncer¬ 
 tainty as to whether he may not be made to pay interest on 
 his own capital. It is certain that a country is misgoverned 
 when the whole nation sympathises with the terrorism which 
 prevents the landowner from creating a famine price for the 
 use of land, especially when otherwise an Irishman has an 
 exceptional respect for his neighbour’s property. I confess 
 if I were a small tenant, at the caprice of an agent, I should 
 feel little consolation in hearing that the Duke of Devon¬ 
 shire has subscribed largely to the Lismore Railway, and 
 should resist Lord Lifford’s claim to the latent powers of 
 the soil, when I know' that every latent power must, by the 
 custom of Ireland, be developed by me and by my fellows. 
 I believe that the remedy for these evils must be general 
 and thorough. It is possible, perhaps, to crush the mani¬ 
 festations of discontent. At present there is an Irish police¬ 
 man to every four hundred and twenty-three Irishmen,— 
 double the English proportion. If the Government ap¬ 
 pointed a policeman to every ten inhabitants, it is possible 
 that agrarian outrage w'ould become so difficult as to be 
 abandoned. But I shudder at the cost. Still more, too, I 
 shudder at the folly of sitting on the safety-valve. Besides, 
 fortunately, you cannot prosecute an indictment against a 
 whole nation. Whatever may he my admiration for the 
 great landow'ners, I should be loth to pay so high a price 
 for their existence and supremacy. 
 
 My friend Mr. Bright’s plan is rational and business¬ 
 like. But, unluckily, its operation must needs be partial. 
 
12 
 
 I know nothing more provoking than to see one man prosper 
 by accident, and secured by an unintended partiality, and 
 another, separated from him by an imaginary boundary 
 only, liable to all the caprices and sordid hardships of the 
 old system. The worst legislation is that which is unequal. 
 It is better to have uniform depression than accidental 
 prosperity imposed on a few by the operation of law. This 
 reform is partial in its operation, with the additional dis¬ 
 advantage of being casual in its incidence. Surely law 
 ought to give equal rights under equal conditions. 
 
 Mr. Mill has propounded a scheme which has the merit 
 of bein<r universal. But it has a special demerit. It makes 
 the state the landlord, the present owner being guaranteed 
 a fixed rent, for which the state is responsible to him, and 
 which the state collects for him. Now—forgive the absur¬ 
 dity of my hypothesis—if I were the state I should like to 
 have my debtors well affected to me. In Ireland, unhappily, 
 this condition is wanting. Fancy the state distraining in 
 Tipperary or Westmeath ! It would require that terrible 
 army of bailiffs which I spoke of just now, one to every ten 
 of the population, in order to collect its rents. Before long 
 I fear that the Irish rents would fall under the head of 
 contingent sources of revenue, and finally dwindle to a sale 
 of old stores. Like Lieutenant Saxby, I should venture 
 feebly on predicting atmospheric disturbance on or about 
 quarter-day, should such an expedient be adopted. 
 
 I believe the only remedy is that of turning the non¬ 
 occupying landowner into the recipient of a fixed rent-charge, 
 payable in money, but calculated, to save changes in the 
 value of money, in produce. I would also put a treble 
 income tax on the absentee owners of such a rent-charge. 
 
 I know that such a scheme is denounced as revolutionary; 
 but all reform, effected by peaceful and legal means though 
 it be, is revolutionary. Christianity was the greatest revolu- 
 lution which the world ever saw. It was peaceful and is 
 perpetually beneficent. Feudalism was the next revolution 
 in magnitude. It was and is anti-Christian ; it has been 
 
13 
 
 violent anil is perpetually malevolent. Unhappily, in the 
 United Kingdom it is stronger than Christianity. 
 
 I cannot see how the landowner would be wronged if he 
 were put into a position of the recipient of a perpetual rent- 
 charge. He has done nothing to the land which his tenant 
 occupies, and therefore cannot claim to be compensated for 
 capital invested in the soil. He has purchased a right to 
 receive interest on the money which his land cost him, in 
 the few cases under which Irish land has come into the 
 landowner’s possession by bargain and sale. If his pro¬ 
 spective rights are to be considered, what would ensue if, 
 by parity of reasoning, the legislature, retrospectively, in¬ 
 vestigated his title? 
 
 There are plenty of precedents in the history of English 
 legislation for such an expedient as I think desirable—that, 
 namely, of giving the tenant a perpetual lease at a fixed 
 rent calculated in agricultural produce. I have alluded to 
 one already, the Tithe Commutation Act. I cannot see, 
 setting the case of the clergy aside, that the prospective 
 rights of landowners are more sacred than the prospective 
 rights of lay impropriators. Again, the compulsory en¬ 
 franchisement of copyholds is, from the landowner’s point 
 of view, an invasion of the rights of property. So again is 
 the compulsory alienation of land for the purpose of making 
 railways. Or are we to say that the prosperity of a country 
 is of less account than the conveyance of passengers and 
 goods P 
 
 In the north of England, especially in Lancashire, the 
 custom of letting lands in towns at a perpetual chief rent is 
 well-nigh universal. Had this custom not prevailed, I am 
 persuaded that Lancashire industries would never have 
 grown to their present bigness. Is that which is expedient 
 in Lancashire inexpedient in Ireland ? 
 
 1 have never yet met an Irish tenant who does not 
 emphatically assert his willingness to pay a fair rent for his 
 holding. It is a calumny excused only by gross ignorance 
 to say that he contemplates the confiscation of his landlord’s 
 
14 
 
 rent. He wishes only to prevent for the future what lias 
 gone on long enough, the confiscation of his own property. 
 
 Does anybody doubt, if 8,500 persons possessed all the 
 food in Ireland, and, resolving to act in concert, were 
 willing to sell this food only at famine prices, that the 
 people would not constrain such proprietors of food to dis¬ 
 pose of it at some customary price? But put land in place 
 of food, and you have the relations of the Irish landlords 
 and the Irish farmer, with this difference, that all the value 
 which the land possesses is directly or indirectly the tenant’s 
 making. 
 
 I don’t deny that the landlord would lose something. He 
 would be no longer able to drive his tenant to the poll to 
 vote against his convictions, his conscience, and his interest. 
 He would be no longer able to make the poor farmer the 
 object of his caprice, his spleen, or his vengeance. He 
 would be no longer able to employ armies to collect his 
 rents. He would not for the future constrain the people 
 to adopt violent means in order to protect their own, nor 
 make a whole nation accomplices after the fact in agrarian 
 murders. But even in these days of compensation nobody 
 thinks of giving equivalents for losses such as these. 
 
 It is said that fixity of tenure will drive the landowner 
 from the country, or at least annihilate his interest in his 
 tenantry. Well, he seldom has more interest in them now 
 than a sheepmaster has in the sheep which he shears by 
 deputy. Under existing circumstances he absents himself 
 on a large scale. Except for reasons which I w ill refer to 
 further on, his absence is not very much deplored. I 
 should like to know how much of Irish rent is paid to 
 absentees. Besides, I do not advise that the state should 
 collect his rent for him. 
 
 Occupation and ownership should gQ together. Accord¬ 
 ing to my plan, the tenant should be put into permanent 
 possession at a fixed rent. He should not, as you suggested 
 to me, be allowed to sub-divide his holding without the 
 landlord’s consent, but he should be empowered to transfer 
 
15 
 
 it at his own discretion. The introduction of middlemen 
 should be obviated by recognising the interest of only two 
 persons, the owner of the rent-charge and the occupier, and 
 bv conferring none of the benefits of the act on any other 
 person. Under these circumstances the tenant might sell 
 his holding or raise money in emergencies on the difference 
 between the landlord’s rent-charge and the improved value 
 of the farm. Such advances would generally be made by 
 banks constituted for that purpose, and similar to the Ger¬ 
 man land-banks or a Credit Foncier; and under the thrifty 
 habits of the Irish farmers the capital for such land-banks 
 would easily be raised in Ireland. 
 
 It is a common habit with thoughtless writers and speakers 
 in England, to speak of the Irish farmer as indolent and 
 unthrifty. No charge can be more false. When the 
 Irish farmer puts on the appearance of beggarliness, 
 he does so to defend himself from the real or anticipated 
 rapacity of agent or landlord. From what I have seen, I 
 am persuaded he is as thrifty as the Belgian peasant, as 
 acute in business as the typical Scotchman, and incompar¬ 
 ably more enterprising, whenever enterprise is safe, than 
 any farmers under the sun. Of the latter fact I have had 
 abundant proof. Do your readers know anything of the 
 growing use of agricultural machines on forty-acre farms? 
 
 There is one risk which the landowner’s rent-charge 
 would run. A tenant might overcrop and exhaust his land. 
 This is, of course, nothing more than reversing the process 
 by which the fertility of the land has been achieved under the 
 efforts of some previous tenant. But the landowner should 
 be protected under such a settlement as I suggest against 
 this contingency. I would propose, to secure such an end, 
 that there should be a cheap and easy process by which 
 such a tenant might be summoned before a jury of farmers, 
 who should, by evidence and after view, give a verdict 
 whether such a charge could be substantiated. If the 
 charge be affirmed by such a jury, the tenant’s holding 
 should be put up to auction. 
 
16 
 
 But the offence would be rare, as well as the remedy 
 easy. Ireland is an agricultural country in which an un¬ 
 successful fanner becomes a farm labourer. The risk of 
 such a downfall would be a very general preventive against 
 the misuse of land, and public opinion would efficiently and 
 speedily protect the landowner against such contingencies 
 as I refer to. The remedy should be before him, but he 
 should be bound to use it just as an owner of houses is 
 necessitated to protect himself against dilapidation or waste 
 on the part of his tenants. 
 
 The right to minerals should be secured to the land- 
 owner. He should be at liberty to enter on the land in 
 order to dig them, on making compensation to the tenant 
 for the injury which entry and digging might inflict. He 
 should also be able to enter on and inspect land at pleasure, 
 but he should be disabled from reserving game. 
 
 If a tenant quits his occupation by selling it, the land- 
 owner should have a right of pre-emption at a small per¬ 
 centage above the highest bid. But unless the landowner 
 occupies the land himself he must be bound to re-let it at 
 the old valuation. Of course, in such a case, he will get a 
 further sum from the incoming tenant,—the difference, 
 namely, between the old and new value, in case new value 
 has accrued. 
 
 All tenures should be registered, transferred, and entered 
 in a land book. This should be open to public inspection 
 on the payment of a small search fee. Duplicates of these 
 registers should be kept in the chief town of each county. 
 No title should be complete until it is registered. 
 
 Facilities should be given for purchasing the rent-charge 
 should the landowner he willing to sell. But if such a 
 purchaser ceases to occupy, he should, as before, be bound 
 to re-let on the old valuation; purchases of such a rent- 
 charge to be completed only by registration. 
 
 There are two processes by which the first valuation 
 could be effected. One, and the simplest, is to take the 
 customary rent for the last five years, provision being made 
 
17 
 
 for meeting the exceptional case of expiring leases. The 
 obvious objection to this plan is that it puts an exacting 
 and a generous landowner on the same footing, stereotyping 
 the rent of each by the same act. You, who know Irish 
 land and Irish landowners better than I do, can tell 
 whether this be a substantial difficulty. The other process 
 is that of a valuation. To English minds the latter is the 
 most obvious and equitable. But if the former plan be 
 adopted, landlord or tenant should be at liberty to demand a 
 valuation, the cost of such valuation being defrayed by the 
 party demanding it. 
 
 I said above that absentees should be made to pay a triple 
 income tax. 1 dare say that in many cases the landowner’s 
 room is better than his company. But the effect of trans¬ 
 mitting rents to an absentee proprietor is exactly the same 
 as that of paying a tribute. No one doubts that a country 
 which pays a tribute is so much the worse off. Thus Lord 
 Hertford is said to take 60,000/. a year from Ulster. His 
 rents are collected and his property secured, practically at 
 the public cost. He spends, and has for many years spent, 
 the proceeds in France. 
 
 These rents are transmitted by the sale of produce. Such 
 a transmission, being equipoised by no counter importation, 
 aids in creating an adverse balance against Ireland, which 
 is recovered by disposing of Irish produce on less favourable 
 terms, in just the same way as in a country’s trade the 
 liquidation of an adverse balance must be effected by forcing 
 the sale of commodities. 
 
 The sugar colonies of the West Indies have, I am in¬ 
 formed, adopted the practice of levying a tax on absentees. 
 The proceeds of such a tax should go to the county cess ; 
 for as the effect of transmitting rent to absentees is to 
 depress the price of commodities, the rectification of such a 
 loss should be devoted to increasing the facilities of transit. 
 
 I have already written you a very long and, I fear, dis¬ 
 cursive letter. But it is impossible to do justice to this 
 topic in any single communication. I cannot, however, but 
 
18 
 
 be reminded that it was in Ireland that the adage, “ Pro¬ 
 perty has its duties as well as its rights,” was first announced. 
 Hitherto the rights have been dwelt on exclusively, and the 
 duties ignored. As a consequence, there is a difference 
 between landlord and tenant in your country which cen¬ 
 turies will not reconcile under the present system, while the 
 condition of things imperatively demands a settlement. I 
 am persuaded that no settlement will be effectual or lasting 
 unless it is of the kind which I have sketched; that the 
 sooner the attempt is made the better; and that you and 
 your colleagues, if you press the matter steadily and temper¬ 
 ately, will not only do great service to your own country¬ 
 men, but heal a scandal which disgraces the government of 
 the greatest nation upon earth, and hinders the perfect 
 union of two races which must have a common destiny, 
 and ought to live in perfect amity. 
 
 You can make any use you please of my letter, and 
 believe me to be, my dear Sir John Gray, yours faithfully, 
 
 JAMES E. THOR OLD ROGERS. 
 
 EDWARD C. ALDEN, PRINTER, OXFORD.