148 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



intact. There is no great agricultural estate 

 attached to this castle. If there were, the rents 

 might be as low as you please, but still the 

 landlord would have trouble in collecting them, 

 and his agent would have to walk warily past 

 hedges. The Irish are essentially a romantic, 

 an imaginative people. They demand leadership. 

 They have the instinct of family pride. " The 

 castle ' given over to cheap trippers would 

 arouse the tenants of any great landlord to 

 resentment. 



I visited a western estate which is now, thanks 

 to the Land Commission, becoming again the 

 home of prospering people, but which for twenty 

 years was a hell of despair. It never, so far as 

 I could ascertain, suffered from " rack-renting." 

 The old rents quoted seemed fair enough. But 

 the owner was a permanent absentee. That 

 made peace impossible. " Sure I never saw me 

 landlord except the once, when he came over 

 to his father's funeral," complained one of the 

 old tenants. That was the grievance. That 

 meant discontent. It also meant — curiously 

 enough, but such is the character of the people 

 — bad cultivation, poverty ; then no rents 



