Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/124

sources. In many respects it stands in favourable juxtaposition with the picture drawn of his English cotemporary by Macaulay, though the noxious influences which emanated from the policy pursued by England towards the Catholics of Ireland must have been as demoralizing to him as it was to every other member of the dominant community. But with any estimate of his individual vices or virtues we are not now concerned. Of one thing alone can we be certain—that in dealing with his property he pursued his own advantage with more or less intelligence, and in doing so exercised a right not only legitimate in itself, but which has been universally recognized as the mainspring of human progress. But it is objected that the practical results of his proceedings have been over-population, rack-rents, and an exodus of 2,000,000 souls. The question is, have these phenomena followed in such direct sequence as is alleged, or have other influences, independent of the landlord's agency, vitiated a system which otherwise would not have been unhealthy? Now, of the three evils he is supposed to have occasioned, the two last are the direct consequences of the first. A rack-rent is the product of competition, and both competition and emigration are the results of over-population. The true measure, therefore, of the responsibility of the Irish landlord is the share he has had in disturbing the equilibrium which ought to have been maintained between the increase of