4 IG Past and Present State of Ai/ri cult tire in Ireland. 
the adv.intajres they had derived, as published in the reports of 
the l\Iarkct-Hill agricidtural dinner, which soon attained an ex- 
traordinary circulation, from the interest taken by the public in the 
success of the experiment. But the attention of landed proprietors 
in Ireland was excited more than elsewhere; many came in person 
to examine into the truth of the reports they had heard — many 
others sent deputations of their tenants, hoping: thereby to make 
a lavourable impression on them, and ensure their more readily 
adopting; the same course ; and in a little time the efficacy of the 
plan being very generally admitted, one landlord after another 
adopted it ; some entirely, by getting over agriculturists from 
Scotland, and following up the system in all its parts ; others par- 
tially, by advancing lime and seeds, and giving premiums for 
green crops, &c. ; and everywhere the advantages of alternate 
cropping and house-feeding were strongly insisted upon by the 
speakers at every farming society and agricultural meeting, and 
ill almost every part of the country a general spirit of improve- 
ment was aroused.* Nor was this movement entirely unaccom- 
])anied by some corresponding influence even in England. In 
some of the Market-Hill dinner reports comparisons were made, 
in regard to the stock maintained and crops produced upon the 
farms of the premium-men upon the Gosford estate, ami the same 
quantity of land in several farms which obtained the premiums for 
being best cultivated in the Avest of England; in all which the 
greater productiveness of the land, both as to stock and crop, by 
the practice of house-feeding, threw the advantage greatly in 
lavour of the former. 
The Agricultural Poor Law Commissioners, in their course 
through the north of Ireland, had been struck by the agricultural 
improvement in progress, and had thought it of sufficient import- 
ance to be specially alluded to in their report ; and Mr. Binns, 
of Lancaster, one of the Commissioners, makes j)articular mention 
of it in his work on the ' Beauties and Miseries of Ireland,' and 
has ever stood forward in all agricultural meetings to recommend 
the practice he had seen at Goslord ; and everywhere recom- 
mended the circulation of the pamphlet already alluded to. This, 
I'oincd with a lavourable review of it in the Highland Society's 
(Quarterly Journal, and the strong testimony borne to the merits 
of the system by the late ever-to-be-lamented Lord Clements 
* Notwithstanding the abuse heaped upon Irish landlords, I think I may 
safely assert that the landed proprietors of Ireland, as a body, will bear a 
comparison with those of any other part of the United Kingdom, in an 
anxious desire to better the condition of their tenants, and im))ri)ve the 
cultivation of their estates. I do not here include middlemen, "whose own 
the sheep are not," and who have no permanent interest in the land or its 
occupiers. 
