13Jan1868, Notions About Ireland

MARSEILLES, January 13th, 1868.
—Last Saturday F. told me of some notions of his about Ireland. This miserable Fenianism makes one think much of its rights and wrongs, though of course it is the outbreak of only the worst and most reckless people. He has always been for the disestablishing of the Church, on the simplest ground of justice to the large majority. The other great grievance being the land tenures, and the thing to be aimed at being the giving the Irish an interest in the soil and some security of tenure, he would make them permanent tenants, as long as they paid fixed rents, to be settled upon according to income-tax.