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civilised part of Europe, would this process of squat- 

 ting and subdivision be allowed by the proprietors of 

 land. It is not easy to see why estates in the High- 

 lands of Scotland should be subject to a practice so 

 ruinous to agriculture and so inevitably productive of 

 a pauper population. 

 Explanation as to 1 have yet to mention one other portion of my 

 piemen enanc} o ^^^j^^^g -j^ ^^^ Islands which has been visited by the 



Commission, I mean a property which belongs to me 

 iu the Island of Lismore. I am all the more glad to 

 do so as it affords me an opportunity of pointing to a 

 practical illustration of the views which I entertain 

 as to the varieties of local circumstance which ought 

 to determine the size of possessions. I have no 

 hesitation in saying that my property in Lismore 

 is one of the few cases I know in which con- 

 solidation has been carried much too far. But I am 

 not responsible. I purchased the property only a few 

 years ago, and found almost the whole of it under 

 lease to one sheep-farmer, whose ordinary residence 

 and whose largest farms are in the Low Country. 

 Lismore is essentially an island adapted to small 

 farms of mixed arable and pasture. Being wholly 

 composed of limestone, its grazing is magnificent, and 

 there are sheets and patches of arable land interspersed 

 amonor the hills and rocks, consistino; of a soil so rich 

 that Dr. Voelker, the eminent chemist of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England, reports to me that it 

 resembles nothino; so much as some of the finest soils 

 of the American continent. I can only say that if I 

 live to see the expiry of the present Lease under which 

 the greater part of that property is held, it is my hope 

 and intention to break up the large single sheep-farm, 



