WHAT WILL DO GOOD IN IRELAND. 243 



perty, may gratify the covetousness of some and the 

 ill-will of others, by injuring the class of landowners, 

 but they will never improve the social state of the 

 people by a hair's breadth. Ireland, like all other 

 countries, contains good and bad of all classes. 

 Those of us who understand farming have no wish 

 to let our land at all, because, from the bad farming 

 of nearly all tenants, we can make much more of it 

 by holding it ourselves. I should be glad to farm 

 every acre of the 3900 that belong to me, and could 

 add much to my income by doing so. The labourers 

 I should employ would as a body be better off in all 

 ways than most of the tenants, and their number 

 would be greater. But I have not the least wish to 

 part with my old friends, and have no thought of 

 doing so ; only I can see no sense in rooting bad 

 tenants in the soil to be paupers, and the cause of 

 evil for generations to come. 



No one who understands the question can doubt 

 that the price of all farming products, except corn, 

 has risen greatly in the last thirty years, and has 

 a tendency still to rise. The mode of farming, too, 

 has greatly improved. The use of bought manures, 

 and of cake and corn in feeding stock, has much 

 increased the profits of farming in ordinary tunes. 

 These are the causes of the rise of rents that has 

 taken place. Lately there has been a check, but 

 prices may, and probably will, increase again when 

 times improve. * 



