I hope that hon. Members opposite, and hon. Gentlemen on this side who
may be disposed in some degree to sympathise with them, will not for a
moment imagine that I am discussing this question in any spirit of
hostility to the landowners of Ireland. I have always argued that the
landowners of Ireland, in their treatment of this question, have
grievously mistaken not only the interests of the population, but their
own. I was told the other day by a Member of this House, who comes from
Ireland, and is eminently capable of giving a sound opinion upon the
point, that he believed the whole of Ireland might be bought at about
twenty years' purchase; but you know that the land of England is worth
thirty years' purchase, and I believe a great deal of it much more,--and
it is owing to circumstances which legislation may in a great degree
remove that the land of Ireland is worth at this moment so much less
than the land of England. Coming back to the question of buying farms, I
put it to the House whether, if it be right to lend to landlords for
improvements, and to tenants for improving the farms of their landlords,
to those who propose to carry on public works, and to repair the ravages
of the cattle plague, I ask whether it is not also right for them to
lend money in cases where it may be advantageous to landlords, and where
they may be very willing to consent to it, to establish a portion of the
tenant-farmers of Ireland as proprietors of their farms.
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