IRELAND-ITS SOCIAL STATE. 137 



servant boy who lives in the house, and sometimes an 

 old or very inferior man who is miserably paid, and 

 whom they also feed because he could not work at 

 all on his home-feeding. It is still a kind of conacre 

 system ; house and potato land, grass for a sheep or 

 two, at a price agreed on, to be paid by the man's 

 labour reckoned at 6d. per day. During a part of 

 the year, when potatoes are over, a certain number 

 of sacks of Indian meal are got from a dealer at 

 usurious interest till the next harvest; the farmer 

 giving security. This and the interest are paid for in 

 the same way by the labourer. It is a sorely oppres- 

 sive system. Bad work, badly paid for, with schem- 

 ing and trickery, and law at all corners. If the 

 labourers depended on the work given them by far- 

 mers, their position would be quite hopeless, except 

 by their leaving the country. From first to last the 

 landlords who give employment are the only persons 

 who have done anything for labourers. The hard- 

 ness with which the farmers treat their labourers is 

 grievous ; very few show them a trace of the con- 

 sideration they so loudly cry for to their own land- 

 lords. If the landlords treated the tenants with 

 half the hardness the tenants show to the labourers, 

 they might very justly complain. 



6. Nor does the matter end here. The produce 

 of the land when well farmed is far greater than 

 when farmed by ordinary tenants. I had occasion a 

 few months ago to talk over with my Scotch bailiff 



