Ireland  and  fostered  throughout  all  its  career  of  wrong  and
crime,  from  motives  of  Imperial  policy,  and,  on  the  other
hand,  would  reimburse  the  Imperial  Exchequer  tenfold  by
cutting  up  from  the  roots  the  discontent  and  turbulence
which  alone  rendered  the  monstrous  charges  for  the  govern-
ment of  Ireland  excusable. Five  years  before,  in  a  speech
of  mine  at  Dromore,  County  Tyrone,^  the  doctrine  had
been  launched — so  far  as  I  know  for  the  first  time — that
in  a  liberal  State  bonus  for  this  most  fruitful  of  State  bene-
factions, not  to  say  restitutions,  lay  the  one  hope  of  rescuing
either  landlords  or  tenants  from  an  everlasting  welter  of
misery  and  insecurity. As  with  all  unfamiliar  suggestions,
neither  my  listeners,  nor  my  colleagues,  nor  the  newspapers
could  be  got  to  give  the  idea  any  serious  attention  at  the

1  At  Dromore,  County  Tyrone  (November  23,  1896),  I  specified  the  exact
operation  which  is  now  legalized  by  the  new  Land  Act,  viz. that  the  State  should
pay  the  difference  between  the  price  the  tenant  could  afford  to  give  and  the  price
the  landlord  could  afford  to  take. I  was  referring  to  the  ;^2, 500,000  of  Irish
over- taxation  reported  by  the  Financial  Relations  Commission — the  ;^2, 500,000
a  year  which  remained  then  and  remains  still  a  standing  monument  of  the  im-
potence of  those  brilliant  financial  calculations  to  which  we  are  at  present  again
being  so  liberally  treated. I  suggested  that  the  one  way  of  turning  the  Financial
Relations  Report  to  any  practical  account  was  to  earmark  a  portion  of  the  money
for  the  settlement  of  the  Land  question,  and  so  give  the  landlords  and  tenants
an  interest  in  making  a  real  fight  for  it  :

"Just  think  of  all  that  two  millions  and  a  half  each  year  would  do  for  Ireland
if  it  remained  at  home. Take  the  Land  question  alone  as  one  of  the  ways  in
which  it  might  be  utilized. 