people will keep it at a famine price.  In his opinion, therefore, the intervention of the Government was absolutely necessary.  Such intervention, he admits to be surrounded with great difficulties, and calculated to impose an enormous additional burthen upon them; it must, however, he holds, be done, or the people will starve.  In reply to those who called for loans, at a low rate of interest, to be expended on the improvement of the land, he says, it is to be remarked that there are already a million of pounds sterling in the hands of the Board of Works, to be lent for the drainage of Irish estates, and but few had availed themselves of that fund.[133]

But this is no complete answer to the call made for reclaiming Irish lands, because the money held by the Board of Works was only lent when applied for.  The advocates for reclaiming waste lands in order to give employment to the starving people wanted a Special Bill empowering the Government to call upon the owners of estates either to reclaim their waste land themselves, or to permit the Government to do so on equitable terms.  To some this seemed an interference with the rights of property; but even if it were, the occasion was sufficient to justify it; for when a whole nation is in the throes of famine—­threatened with annihilation, as Ireland then was—­salus populi suprema lex should become the guiding principle of a government.  Extraordinary evils call for extraordinary remedies.  Nor would such a law be one whit more of an interference with the rights of property than the law which enables a railway company to make their line through a man’s estate whether he likes it or not, giving him such compensation as may be awarded by an impartial tribunal.  And this is just, for no private individual ought to have the power of preventing what is for the general prosperity.  But important as the construction of a railway may be, there is no comparison between its importance and that of saving the lives of a whole people, for whose benefit railways are constructed, and all material improvements projected and carried out.

That some compulsory clauses were necessary in the Drainage Bill is clear from the statement of O’Connell, that but few availed themselves of its provisions.  Speaking of this Bill, a gentleman whose opinion must carry much weight with it, says, that all acquainted with the subject admit the whole cost of thorough draining would be returned by the first crop, or the first two, or at least by the first three crops.[134] “Under such circumstances,” he asks, “how can the country be exposed to danger or suffering from an infliction such as now threatens?  It is impossible, unless we assume all the parties interested—­whether the government, the landed proprietors, the farmers, or the labourers—­to be inert, and forgetful of their respective interests to an extent of which the world has not yet seen a parallel ...  Is it possible to imagine that such a cooperation can be