PREFACE. XV 



adjoining land, which I farm myself, and which is 

 less good. This is what the Tenant League calls 

 rack-renting. The second case is still stronger. A 

 tenant named Lucey held 118 acres of a farm I 

 bought, at £84 rent. Much of the farm is the very 

 best land in the parish, really first-rate land. I 

 offered him the farm at £1 per acre. He refused it 

 again and again, sowed flax in the most of it, and 

 did all the injury he could. The excellence of the 

 land made me hold it myself with a dairy. The 

 first year I cleared £151 net as rent. Five years 

 after, 1870, the farm cleared £223. In 1875 it 

 cleared £283. In 1880 it cleared £288. This 

 is clear of all deductions except the interest on the 

 value of the cows, — perhaps £30, — and about £10 

 interest on money laid out in draining, etc. I 

 asked the tenant £120 rent for the farm, which 

 Father O'Leary and the Land League declare was 

 a rack-rent. All the others complained of are on 

 some land I have, that is very near the town. 

 Fields near the town let at £3 per acre. Three 

 acres feed a cow. The milk sells for l|d. to 2d. per 

 quart in the town, and the cows thus pay £14 to 

 £18 each, from which £9 deducted for rent of three 

 acres leaves a good profit. 



As the land is farther off from the town it lets for 



