186 



DICKSON ON THE ADVANTAGE OF 



their estates, living amongst their tenantry, and cherishing 

 towards them a paternal regard, in place of leaving them to 

 the caprice of paid agents and their co-partners (Ireland's 

 curse), the attorneys. Amongst the tenantry of such men as 

 the Lords Downsliire, Roden, Mandeville, La?iesborough, etc., 

 we never read in Assize or Petti/ Sessions reports, of either 

 cruelty or neglect, or of orders issued calculated to shorten the 

 days of fatherless and helpless infancy. No, they prefer having 

 a portrait and description of their real worth as landlords 

 (drawn from their acts to a happy tenantry), not emblazoned 

 in and enlarged on by any illustrated publication, but written 

 on the hearts of a people whose high-minded feelings on 

 subjects of justice and truth are equal to the owners of the 

 soil of Ulster. They are perfectly aware of the true meaning 

 of the phrase that 'property has its duties as well as its 

 rights,' and as they are a Flax-growing and manufacturing 

 people, and generally speaking, first-rate farmers, and en- 

 couraged in all their pursuits by the owners of the soil, the 

 facts cannot be made too public, because in my humble opinion, 

 they must lead to a national benefit. 



"Her Majesty's ministers have now a splendid opportunity 

 of doing Ireland a great and important service ; the late govern- 

 ment failed to do anything to relieve the distress, but with a 

 niggardly hand advanced £1,000 annually, whereas £10,000 

 for the same purpose would have been too little to perma-- 

 nently establish the culture of Flax in the southern and 

 western districts. Let these facts be impressed upon those 

 now in power. They profess with honest sincerity, I am well 

 convinced, to be the friends of the farmer. Let them make 

 advances to landlords to erect breaking and scutching mills 

 of the most improved description, so that there may be one 

 every five miles apart in every county in Ireland, and not 

 only will the great prisons, such as the Tralee workhouse, be 

 soon emptied of their starved inmates, but the profits that can 



