32G 



The Country Gentleman s Magazine 



having a kind-hearted resident landlord to 

 appeal to. But this knowledge has not the 

 effect one would have anticipated ; security 

 produces ease, and a low rent indolence and 

 extravagance. I know many instances where 

 property is let 20 per cent, below that which 

 surrounds it, where leases are in existence, 

 and where there is every reason why progress, 

 good cultivation, and the comforts attendant 

 ■on industry should exist ; but in point of fact 

 the land is as much worn out, as badly fenced, 

 drained, and cultivated, and there is as great a 

 difficulty in collecting the rents as under less 

 .favourable circumstances. At the same time 

 the sales in the Encumbered Estates Court 

 have had a good effect. In various parts of 

 the country improvements upon a good 

 scale, and upon modern principles have been 

 made ; good blood both in cattle and sheep 

 has been imported ; and in this way new ideas 

 have become diffused amongst the tenantry, 

 and much real progress made. When we re- 

 member such cases as that of Allan Pollok,who 

 is undoubtedly one of Ireland's best friends, 

 devoting himself with his skill and capital to 

 the development of her resources, and the 

 employment of her poor; how he was 

 made the butt of a party and denounced, 

 because he was engaged in closing the 

 grave of a system whose last knell had 

 been tolled, but out of which agitators were 

 anxious to create political capital for them- 

 selves — we need not wonder to-day, when we 

 find the same spirit assume the form it has 

 now taken, and shew itself in its true light, as 

 opposed to all progress and all law and order. 

 In passing through the country the almost 

 titter absence of a substantial middle class is 

 apparent everywhere ; the mansion and the 

 cabin alone strike the eye. This, I hold, to 

 be an unhealthy state of things. Society is 

 not well constituted, or properly balanced 

 without the elements upper, middle, and 

 lower, being well defined. Each is essential 

 to the others, the upper with its refined tastes 

 and many artificial wants, to give tone ; the 

 middle, the backbone of every country, with 

 its energy, knowledge, and capital, to devise ; 

 and the lov/er to execute. The middle class 

 in agriculture, is only of very recent origin 



here — men capable of tiding o^'er a temporary 

 difficulty, embued v^'ith notions of progress, 

 and disposed to develop the resources of 

 their farms. Such men have been largely 

 created by the absorption that has taken 

 place, and by the vv^eeding out of those who 

 were unable or unwilling to go with the times. 

 This class of tenants hold by lease, as a rule, 

 with the exception that they may require 

 some provision to induce or enable them to 

 lay out their capital in reclamation and im- 

 provements, and to place them in such a 

 position that the fruits of their labour can- 

 not be denied them. They have no real 

 grounds of complaint, and, from my own per- 

 sonal knowledge of this class, I am satisfied 

 that whilst they would hail with delight any well 

 digested measures that would reduce our local 

 burdens, improve our fairs and markets, and 

 create facilities for our agricultural develop- 

 ment, they are as sternly opposed to uncon- 

 stitutional measures, and as free from the dirt 

 through which wild and unscrupulous agita- 

 tors have tried to drag them, as the most 

 loyal class in the community. By far the 

 largest proportion of tenants (7 7^(? agricultural 

 returns) are holders of farms under 50 acres, 

 and of these few have leases. So much loss, 

 and so many difficulties have presented them- 

 selves from time to time to the landlords in 

 dealing with them, that the general feeling 

 appears to be opposed to granting leases in 

 their case. For whilst it is at all times easy 

 to get a bad tenant to fasten himself on you, 

 if he possesses a lease, it is no light matter to 

 get rid of him. With these small farmers the 

 cultivation is generally of the worst possible 

 description ; the soil is impoverished to the 

 last degree, and there is seldom any attempt at 

 reclamation. This may in some measure be 

 due to the tenure, but more generally arises 

 from want of capital or industry. The pretty 

 picture so often drawn by the advocates of 

 this class is in practice generally reversed — 

 ex nihil, nihil fit. To expect a man, who is 

 not unusually worse off than a labourer, to 

 fertilize a soil, or reclaim a waste, is simply 

 absurd. The return for outlay in agriculture 

 is necessarily slow, and in cases of reclamation 

 very uncertain — neither suited to the needy 



