Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate conviction in the tenants’ mind that the absolute power of the landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword.  Right or wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural rights of the people whom Providence placed in this country.  With bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to root a nation out of its own land.  Painful as this state of feeling is, there is no use in denying that it exists.  Here, then, is the deep radical difference that is to be removed.  Here are the two conflicting forces which are to be reconciled.  This is the real Irish land question.  All other points are minor and of easy adjustment.  The people say, and, I believe, sincerely, that they are willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public valuation—­not a rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties, which might be raised so as to ruin the occupier.  The feelings of these two parties often clash so violently, there is such instinctive distrust between them, the peace and prosperity of the country depend so much on their coming to terms and putting an end to their long-standing feud, that it is still more imperatively necessary than in the Church question, that a third party, independent, impartial, and authoritative, should intervene and heal the breach.

There was one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever—­’the want of tenure.’  All the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed industry and impeded social progress.  It seems strange that any evidence should be thought necesary to prove that a man will not sow if he does not hope to reap, and that he will not build houses for strangers to enjoy.  This would be taken as an axiom anywhere out of Ireland.  Of all the people in Europe, the Irish have suffered most from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the country.  Whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims; and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists were ecclesiastics.  The extent to which they were slaughtered in the perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the English, is something awful to contemplate, not to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which those wars entailed.  On several occasions the Celtic race seemed very nearly extinct.  The penal code, with all its malign influence, had one good effect.  It subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by suffering.  Since that time, in spite of occasional visitations of calamity, they have been steadily rising in the social scale, and they are now better off than ever