IRELAND— ITS SOCIAL STA TE. 135 



What chance is there that men who ask this will be 

 able to lay out hundreds of pounds in permanent im- 

 provements and improved farming ? The truth is, 

 that to look to the tenants for such an outlay is a 

 mere pretence. They cannot do it, and have not the 

 qualities to enable them to make it succeed, even if 

 they had the money to pay for it. I have had well- 

 to-do tenants ask me to let my men do some special 

 job for them that was properly their own, and offer 

 to repay me the cost. They said I should do it so 

 much cheaper than they could get it done, that it 

 w^ould be a considerable gain to them. !N"early all 

 the improvements now existing have been made by 

 the owners of the land, except a certain number of 

 dwelling-houses, about which a not unhealthy vanity 

 has grown up ; and even of these in most cases the 

 landlord has paid a large part of the cost — usually 

 half. The statements made of tenants having made 

 improvements are very rarely true, unless thatched 

 cabins and a multitude of useless fences are im- 

 provements. The tenants are unable to carry out 

 any heavy job of reclamation, as much for want of 

 knowledge as of means. 



Further, the improvements in farming during the 

 last twenty years have been almost wholly the effect 

 of the example of the landowners' Scotch bailiffs — 

 "stewards" as they are called in Ireland. Some 

 landowners, not satisfied with their own know- 

 ledge of farming, have sent their sons to Scotland 



