This being the case, in what manner are the Irish people to subsist in future? There is the land and there is labor enough to bring it into cultivation. But such is the state in which the land is placed, that capital cannot be employed upon it. You have tied up the raw material in such a manner — you have created such a monopoly of land by your laws and by your mode of dealing with it — as to render it alike a curse to the people and to the owners of it.
— JOHN BRIGHT, Speech in the House of Commons, April 2, 1849. Speeches of John Bright, I., p. 332, (Edition of 1868).
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