126 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



1. My grandfatlier, in the busy practice of a pro- 

 fession, bought the estate when past mid-life as an 

 investment. His only son, after eighteen years in the 

 Dragoons, married and settled in England. It was 

 more than twenty years afterwards, when he was on 

 the wrong side of fifty, that the estate became his. 

 Less than ten years after that time I took it in hand. 

 My grandfather's and father's view of management was 

 to let the land at moderate rents, and allow the tenants 

 to do as they liked in most tilings. As to using any 

 harshness, even when the tenants neglected the prim- 

 ary duty of paying their moderate rents, such a thought 

 never crossed their minds. Their fault was, that they 

 were not before their time, and were too easy. No 

 doubt the tenants would have prospered more if the 

 estate had been managed with business-like strictness. 

 Still there was nothing, except their own faults, to 

 hinder them from prospering ; and the burthen of their 

 being in the condition in which I found them lies on 

 themselves and on no one else. It was just a case of 

 land bought for ordinary fair motives, in confidence 

 on the law of the country, and treated in the ordinary 

 fair way of that time. I believe tliis was the case 

 with nearly all purchases within the last hundred 

 years, in which time a large part of the countiy has 

 been bought. 



There seems to be a notion that owners of land 

 in Ireland acquired it in some other way than it was 

 acquired in England. Except perhaps a few great 



