IRISH RENTS. 25 



tion. Land for potatoes lets to artisans in the 

 town, and labourers earning much higher wages, at 

 4 to 5 per acre, instead of 2 or 3. Curiously, 

 too, carpenters, masons, shoemakers, etc., though 

 earning much higher wages themselves, especially 

 grudge paying the higher wages of labourers for 

 cultivating their potato gardens, so they put the 

 same manure on half the former quantity of land 

 to save labour and raise a better crop. Of course, 

 the land gains by this. In fact, these town tenants 

 cram the land with manure. The farming is still 

 very bad, but they have learnt the one lesson of 

 manure, and thus are making a better profit at high 

 rents than they used to make at low. 



Is this undue competition or exorbitant rents ? 

 Or the fair profit of good management and judgment 

 paying both landlord and tenant ? As to ill-will 

 on the estate, there is none of it. Of the few 

 tenants who are not thriving, two are good sort 

 of fellows, but careless and lazy, of the "raal ould 

 sort ;" two are old men past work, without families 

 (one has a son, a scamp now in gaol, who, when 

 loose, will not work, but spend all he can wring 

 out) ; three are being eaten up alive by relatives 

 they have got as helpers and labourers on the farms ; 

 one is a pet of a neighbouring gentleman, and loses 

 pounds in picking up half-crowns ; and the last is a 

 small shopkeeper whose business has failed. In 

 twenty- five years that I have lived in Ireland, and 



