108 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



corn and cake for feeding stock. All improvements, 

 including manures and cake, have been paid for out 

 of income ; of course out of the profit returned by 

 the manures and improvement itself. I have thus 

 gradually felt my way into success ; because of the 

 uncertainty of what would pay in Ireland it was 

 more prudent thus to act. The outlay on manure 

 and cake now exceeds 1000 in the year. Very few 

 new machines are used. There is nothing done that 

 any common farmer of fair means who is industrious 

 cannot carry out on the scale that fits his own farm. 

 From the way we have taken up the land, that 

 which I hold has been the poorest by nature and the 

 most exhausted by the worst tenants. In fact, speak- 

 ing generally, I hold all the worst land, and the ten- 

 ants all the better land, on the property. Anything 

 more miserable than its state cannot be conceived. I 

 have often laughed at tenant-right advocates who urge 

 that they have a claim to compensation for having 

 reclaimed the land from a state of nature. The truth 

 is the bad tenants took every good thing out of the 

 land that nature at first put in it, and left it as near 

 a caput mortuum as possible. By paring and burn- 

 ing and over-cropping they had brought it so down 

 that it would not even grow couch. A few docks 

 and thistles, and a tuft of hard grass here and there, 

 with the bare red soil between, was not uncommon. 

 I have seen turnip drills, made ten years before, from 

 which the few small bulbs had been pulled, and the 



