He came to remedies.  His opinion was that the great cause of the existing state of Ireland was the land question.  The fact is, he said, the House has done too much for the landlord and too little for the tenant.  He enumerated the principal laws conferring power on the landlords, adding that he did not believe there was a more fertile source of murder and outrage than those powers. “Thus,” said he, “the source of crime is directly traceable to the legislation of this House.”  The repeal of those Land Laws was one of the remedies which he called for, but not the only one.  He wanted the House to determine at once to do justice to Ireland politically as well as in relation to the law of landlord and tenant.  In the first place, he said Ireland had not an adequate number of members to represent her in the House, next she wanted an extension of the franchise, thirdly, corporate reform, and, lastly, a satisfactory arrangement of the temporalities of the church.  These four general remedies he demanded from the House, as a mode of coercing the people of Ireland, by their affections and their interests, into a desire to continue the Union with England.  “I want,” he said, “the House to determine at once to do justice to Ireland politically as well as in relation to the law of landlord and tenant.”

He maintained that the Land Laws passed since the Union should be repealed, and above all he called for full compensation for every improvement made by the tenant.  “Labour,” he said, “is the property of the tenant, and if the tenant by his labour and skill improved the land, and made it more valuable, let him have the benefit of those improvements, before the landlord turns him out of possession.”  In Lord Devon’s report he found the superior tranquillity of Ulster was traced to the security given to the tenant by tenant right, in proof of which he quoted the evidence of Mr. Handcock, Lord Lurgan’s agent, and other Northern witnesses who were examined before the Devon Commission.  “This then,” he continued, “is the evidence of the North of Ireland as to the value of tenant right.  How often have I heard all the boast of the superior tranquillity of the North?  It was because they were better treated by their landlords, and, generally speaking, there was a better feeling there towards the landlords, and because the tenants were allowed to sell their tenant right.  In the County Tipperary there is an agrarian law, which is the law of ejectment; in the province of Ulster there is a general law giving the tenants valuable rights.  He (Mr. O’Connell) called upon the House to make their choice between the two.  Now was the time for the choice.  The country had arrived at a state when something must be done.”

This is what Mr. D’Israeli calls “a panegyric of Ulster.”

“Are you,” he concluded, “desirous of putting an end to these murders?  Then it must be by removing the cause of the murder.  You could not destroy the effect without taking away the cause.  I repeat, the tranquillity of Ulster is owing to the enjoyment of tenant right; when that right was taken away, the people were trodden under foot, and, in the words of Lord Clare, ‘ground to powder.’”