232 Reclamation of Bog and Moorland in Gahcay. 
another? There is a vast amount of waste in the hand-tillage 
of the Irish cotter ; the same labour applied methodically on a 
farm where horses or oxen are employed will add much more to 
the wealth of the country. The labourer will himself live much 
better on 8s. or 9s. a week, than on the produce of his bit of 
hand-tilled land. The great and perhaps sole advantage of the 
cotter-system is that something is laid by against old age. The 
man who has reclaimed a bit of land, and is allowed by his 
landlord to reap the full benefit of his labour, will, in his old 
age, continue to pay a rent of 2s. 6rf. or 5s. for land that he has 
made worth 20s. or more an acre. The labourers at Kylemore 
do not sacrifice their home advantages by working for hire 
during a great part of the year. Home is home, be it ever so 
homely, and the love of home is nowhere stronger than among 
the pure Celts of Connemara : a gentle, honest, childlike race, 
in a very low state of civilisation, from which they can only 
be raised by cautious steps. An amusing illustration of this 
occurred in the last cottage on the estate that was shared by man 
and beast. For some years a cattle-shed, built close to the 
cottage, remained unoccupied, because it would break the old 
man's heart to turn the cows out of the living-room. When the 
old man died, the young people consented to put the cattle in 
the shed and keep the room for human beings only. 
The allotment of waste land among our labouring classes has 
been advocated from time to time by well-meaning men, who 
hope that by spade-husbandry the labourer will raise himself in 
the social scale. No encouragement can be derived for such 
a scheme from the experience of Kylemore. The lesson to be 
learned here is that any such attempt can only result in the 
waste of labour and the degradation of the man. The Irish 
cotter has long occupied land at a low rent, with a tenure in 
most cases virtually, though not legally, secure. His position is 
much lower physically, morally, and socially, than that of any 
class of men earning day-wages in the British Islands. From a 
social point of view, the chief merit of these works of recl-amation 
is that they afford the poor cotter an opportunity to raise himself 
gradually from that miserable state of living from hand to mouth 
in which he has so long been sunk. A bad crop of potatoes 
brings want and suffering always in its wake, and a single failure 
would even now bring back famine to the district. Prevention 
is far better than the cure of such calamities. While there is 
no encouragement for those who would settle our now unculti- 
vated land with peasant proprietors, there is much here .that 
may be suggestive to those who own similar tracts of land, and 
wish to recognise the responsibilities as well as the privileges 
which the ownership of property entails. 
