182 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



wealth, condition of their farms, and good farming. If 

 any one thinks Lord Portsmouth's example is of weight 

 in the question, I ask him to come and see my land. 



The simple fact is that money laid out by the 

 farmer in manuring exhausted land will pay him 

 many times better than any otlier way he can spend 

 it. Ten, twenty, fifty per cent is a common return. 

 Often all the money comes back in the first crop, and 

 pays well for years after. Wliat money my men had 

 they thus laid out, instead of stripping themselves 

 bare to buy Tenant-right. In consequence, the con- 

 dition of their farms is much better, and when times 

 were good they were fast making money. Many are 

 now wealthy men. There are few who are not com- 

 fortable, or whom I should wish to change. 



Thus the fatal objection to the Ulster Tenant- 

 right is that it absorbs, in buying it, all or a great 

 part of whatever capital an incoming tenant has, and 

 leaves him often without the means of farming well, 

 and always crippled in means. There can be no 

 doubt that in Ireland the farming class is far less 

 wealthy than the same class in England and Scotland. 

 Yet whilst there every care is taken to let only men 

 with sufficient capital into farms ; it is said here it will 

 be for the advantage of all future Irish farmers to pay 

 away a great part of the small capital they have to 

 the outgoing tenants, who nine times out of ten 

 failed because they were indolent or drank, and that a 

 heavy fine in the shape of arrears of rent should be 



