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TJic Country Gcntkvians Magazine 



obtained employment, plenty, and indepen- 

 dence, becoming occupiers and citizens of 

 the finest country in the world, I am at a 

 loss to see why there should not be general 

 thankfulness at so happy a result, and a de- 

 sire on the part of every honest man to wish 

 them " God speed." 



Let us now turn to the owners in 

 fee. I may here remark that whilst great 

 sympathy has always been expressed for our 

 exiled countrymen, calumny and vitupera- 

 tion has been unsparingly poured upon the 

 heads of our unfortunate landlords, who 

 were, if possible, even greater sufferers than 

 their dependents. Agitators, who were look- 

 ing for the support and vote of the many, 

 hesitated not in Parliament and elsewhere, by 

 inuendo and overdrawn representation, to 

 paint the character and conduct of the land- 

 lords in the blackest colours, laying to their 

 charge all the difficulties under which the 

 country laboured ; and, strange as it may 

 appear, few if any of the gross mis-statements 

 were rebutted by the class against whom they 

 were made, but were allowed tacitly to pass, 

 and thus became accepted as facts by the 

 English public. When we consider that 

 about one-ninth of the whole country came 

 to the hammer in the Encumbered Estates 

 Court, and much of it at a time when all was 

 panic ; that a still larger proportion was with- 

 out rental, encumbered with heavy rates 

 and in the hands of paupers, who were un- 

 able even to cultivate, much less to meet 

 their present engagements, we can readily 

 understand that the position of the landlords 

 was no light one, both as regards their own 

 personal condition, and as regards the exer- 

 cise of their duties'to those upon their estates. 

 The universality of the distress increased the 

 difficulties of adjustment tenfold. Men who 

 were tenants were not disposed to become 

 labourers ; many farms having been in pos- 

 session of their families for generations, and 

 the old feudal notion of an innate right to the 

 soil having been engendered in their minds, 

 they could not be induced to quit. Thus at 

 every step the necessary changes of conver- 

 sion and absorption of the small holdings was 



stoutly resisted ; and all this made the pro- 

 cess both tedious and expensive, and often 

 unnecessarily harsh. Other landlords were 

 more fortunate, and had tenants who were 

 able to tide over the almost universal deluge, 

 whilst some found their estates literally left 

 unto them desolate. The old system which 

 had existed under the potato culture was 

 now gone, and the hard experience already 

 gained pointed to emigration, larger farming, 

 and the introduction of improved agriculture, 

 as the best method of resuscitating the coun- 

 try, all which at the present time are bringing 

 forth good fruit in well paid rentals, in re- 

 duced pauperism and crime, and in steadily 

 increasing national wealth. 



The Encumbered Estates Court infused 

 capital and life and vigour into the agricul- 

 tural community. Purchasers, in the work 

 of re-adjustment, were not trammelled by old 

 family ties or traditions. In many instances 

 large tracts of land were cultivated or re- 

 claimed upon the modern notions of a regular 

 system of horse and manual labour, combined 

 with machinery. Many owners, too, who 

 had capital turned their attention to the cul- 

 tivation of their exhausted and undeveloped 

 estates, whilst others unable to procure the 

 necessary plant and stock, leased them at 

 greatly reduced rents, converting the small 

 farms into large ones, and their tenants either 

 into labourers or emigrants. I>arge tracts, 

 too, of mountain and very inferior land re- 

 turned to their pristine condition, the cost 

 of cultivation (in the absence of the potato) 

 and the value of the produce putting profit 

 out of the question. But the difficulties of 

 re-adjustment did not stop here. To meet 

 the requirements of the times the modern 

 system of agriculture had to be introduced, 

 small fields had to be converted into large 

 ones, the spade had to give way to the plough, 

 the sickle to the scythe, the flail to the thrash- 

 ing-machine ; labour had to be reduced to a 

 system ; and to transform the traditions and 

 habits of a people almost necessarily involved 

 much up-hill work on the part of capitalists, 

 and no small heartburnings and misgivings 

 upon the part of tenants and labourers. 



