IRELAND, 1840-1880. 97 



Whenever good farming becomes general, the 

 customs will be found to be ruinous in Ulster 

 too. So long as the linen trade, and especially 

 hand-loom weaving, prevailed in country parts, the 

 injury of tenant-right was not felt. The weaving 

 supplied capital to buy small lots of land, and farm 

 them afterwards. That the Ulster tenant-right is no 

 security against starvation or distress is clear from 

 the state of parts of Donegal. The Ulster tenant- 

 right prevails to the utmost height in Donegal, and 

 the distress in Donegal now is quite as bad as in the 

 worst parts of Connaught, if not worse. 



I now come to my own doings for the improve- 

 ment of an estate of nearly 4000 acres. I have said 

 the estate had been thoroughly neglected. My 

 grandfather never saw it in his life. My father 

 never saw it but once, when he drove along the 

 mail-coach road that skirts it in a carriage, stopped 

 for half -an -hour to talk to the tenants who met him, 

 and then drove back again. The agent was bad, 

 and about 1838 turned out dishonest and took a 

 large sum of rent for his own use. It was needful 

 that some one should look after the estate. I had 

 been brought up at Harrow and Balliol, and was 

 a lawyer about London on the Home Circuit. 

 Having been born and lived much in Suffolk, on 

 the very edge of Norfolk, where some knowledge 

 of farming, like Dogberry's reading and writing, 



