"Rochdale, November 11, 1867.
"Mr DEAR have read your Russia and Ireland with much in- terest, and, as far as you go, I agree with you, but I think more requires to be done. Your plan is to help tenants to buy farms where owners are willing to sell, to lend them money on easy terms, and to take good security for the transaction. Owners are not very willing to sell, and the process of restoration, of creating an Irish proprietary, would be very slow.
"In my speech in Dublin a year ago, I suggested another plan, not unlike yours, but more certainly operative, and with which yours might be combined. I proposed a Parliamentary Commission, empowered to buy large estates, particularly of English proprietors of Irish property, and to resell them in existing farms to existing tenants, on terms some- thing like those which you propose. A sum of 5,000,0001, thus at the disposal of the Commission would secure some large estates, apd the process of creating farmers, owners of farms,' would begic at twee and would go on rapidly. Your plan in fifty years would clh much
mine would do much in fire years, and in twenty yearn or less would change the aspect of things in Ireland.
"Yon want the change we are both in favour of, that is, we want to make the Irish farmer attached to the soil by the tie of ownership, I rather than by that which now exists, the necessity to have a holding in land that he may live.
"We want, further, to beget a now and better national sentiment, to convince every Irishman now on the land that we do not intend to drive him across the Atlantic, but to remain a contented dweller on his own soil. I think my scheme would do this, would give hope and faith, and inspire him with a belief in the future, and stimulate him to effort and industry.
"You will see the difference between your scheme and mine—yours is for a long time, and for the future—mine is to grapple at once with the desperate malady which keeps your country in a state of chronic. discontent and insurrection.
"Your plan may be more easily secured, but our children will only see much result from it ;—mino would, I think, restore confidence, and banish speedily some of the despair and disloyalty which so extensively prevail.
"In some of our colonies, in Canada and in New Brunswick, I believe Government has bought off landlords' rights with great advantage to the people ; why not try something in Ireland? Thanking you for your excellent pamphlet, I am very truly yours, JOHN BRIGHT. "Henry Dix Hutton, Esq., Dublin."
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