TAKING A FARM. 83 



which would have pastured twenty. But things had 

 gone wrong here too ; rates were in arrear, and rents 

 unpaid ; and at that moment a watch was kept on the 

 road to give timeous warning of the rate-collector's 

 approach, so that the cows might be hid out of sight for 

 fear of seizure. 



Very few of the farmers here begin with any capital. )( 

 When a man manages to save £100 or £200, he goes 

 to a landlord and offers a certain rent for a farm, back- 

 ing his offer with all the capital he has, as a douceur or 

 fine in hand, to induce the landlord to accept his terms. 

 The offer is accepted and the fine paid. Having thus 

 exhausted his capital, the tenant then advertises that on 

 the following Sunday he will set out a certain field for 

 potatoes. Several hundred people assemble, and each 

 marks out the piece he wishes to have. A rent is fixed 

 for it, probably £10 an acre ; one -third of which must 

 be paid before breaking the ground, and the other two- 

 thirds before removing the crop. The tenant thus gets 

 all his rent out of perhaps the fifth part of his holding. 

 The same thing is repeated, on the same field, a second 

 and sometimes a third year, after which the tenant takes 

 two or three crops of oats, and then lets the land "rest" 

 to recover itself. This process is pursued with other 

 parts of the land till all is gone over, by which time the 

 first is ready to begin upon again. The money paid in 

 advance, by the potato-renters, enables the farmer, with 

 what credit he possesses, to stock the rest of his land, 

 and in this way he manages to carry on without capital. 

 But the potato failure put an end to this rotten system ; 

 and the tenant who depended on it, and the landlord 



