This, in his opinion, would not answer, because it would be too slow, too isolated, to do the work in a broad, comprehensive manner, and within a reasonable time. 2.  The next plan which he passes in review is what he terms joint-stock enterprise.  This he also rejects, as being expensive in management, and therefore unremunerative. 3.  Reclamation by the Government, so commonly advocated, he also rejects, because he did not think such an undertaking within the legitimate sphere of the Government, and that it would be inconsistent with sound policy.

Having set aside these three modes of reclamation, he puts forward his own.

1.  He was of opinion that the principle of individual industry should be applied to the reclamation of the waste lands, and that a reasonable share of the fruits of the industry of the reclaimer should be secured to him.  Where enlightened proprietors have done this, their wastes, he says, became fertile, and agrarian outrages were unknown.  Give, in a word, the Irish peasant the same interest in reclaiming the waste at home, that he gets in reclaiming the waste abroad, and the same beneficial results will follow.

2.  For the right working of this principle, the waste lands should be resumed by the State.  This he regarded as an indispensable preliminary.  Pay the proprietors fully for them, let the ground be valued as it is valued for railways; paid for at its present, not its prospective value, and let it be vested in Commissioners.  Lots of convenient size should be made, and sold, when reclaimed; but at no higher price than twenty-four years’ purchase.  The State should also empower the Commissioner to sell waste, in lots of not less than ten acres; ten acres to be the minimum of reclaimed lots also.  Existing proprietors should have the option of reclaiming or selling; but in the former case security should be given that the work would be immediately proceeded with.

Mr. Fagan would ask no pecuniary aid from the Government to carry out his plan; he would meet the expenses of it by an agency tax, that is, a tax upon house and land agencies, and upon all agencies.  In saying this he must have meant, that he would not ask money out of the Consolidated Fund; for he could not but have seen that in carrying it out by a tax of any kind, he would be doing so by the aid of the Government.  The effect of Mr. Fagan’s plan would have been, to create, to a certain extent, a peasant proprietary.

Mr. Poulett Scrope, then representing the borough of Stroud in Parliament, took much interest in Irish questions, more especially during the Famine; at which time he, in a series of letters addressed to Lord John Russell, put forward his views on the legislation which he considered necessary under the existing circumstances of this country.  Three Bills in his opinion, should have been at once proceeded with in Parliament; one to facilitate the sale of encumbered estates; one to improve the relations between landlord and tenant;