120 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



the end aimed at, for their own purposes, by one 

 party in Ireland. Every day may be seen statements 

 in the papers, as if it was the duty of landlords to 

 preserve the occupiers of these seven to ten acre 

 plots of bad land, supply them both with seeds and 

 potatoes to plant their land, and afterwards forego 

 the rent, and much else. It is nothing to save their 

 lives from hunger : the aim is to preserve them as 

 tenants. The truth is, landlords are greatly to blame 

 for ever having permitted such miserable holdings to 

 exist ; and the only possible course of amendment is 

 to treat the land as neglected estates would be treated 

 in England or Scotland to remove gradually the 

 worst tenants and let their land to the best. If any 

 one reckons the value of their plots, he will find that 

 if they had them rent free it would not support them. 

 I do not know Connaught, but I know Munster 

 well, and the talk that the Irish people dislike emi- 

 gration is not true. My part is poor, the extreme 

 south of County Cork, and it is believed there is not 

 a poor family in that part of the country that has not 

 near relatives in America ; my own tenants, labourers, 

 and servants all have, as we often hear from their 

 letters. There is no reluctance to emigrate, hardly 

 so much as natural feeling would be expected to 

 cause anywhere. They have gone to all parts of the 

 world. One thoroughly thriving tenant has two 

 daughters in Queensland, both married, one to a 

 shopkeeper so well off that when the son of the 



