The mere stated non-residence of a landowner of 
altogether opposite character—of comprehensive 
mind, sound judgment, patriotic feelings, and en- 
lightened, benevolent, religious concern for the 
best interests of his tenantry—is not necessarily 
an evil, but may be, to a very large and benign 
degree, compensated by the practice of a wise 
and paternal system of agency. Some landlords, 
as those holding offices of national trust, are in 
a great measure absentees from a necessary re- 
gard to public duty; some, as those who have 
much affliction either in their own person or in 
that of their immediate relatives, are sometimes 
absentees from a due regard to domestic obliga- 
tion ; some, as the London Companies who hold 
extensive property in the county of Londonderry, 
are always absentees from the peculiar and irre- 
mediable nature of their tenure ; and some, as 
the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl Fitzwil- 
' liam, must either be always absentees by rota- 
tion in several districts, or constant residents in 
one, and constant absentees in others, in conse- 
_ quence of their estates being of vast extent, mu- 
tually detached, and even situated in different 
kingdoms. The utmost which the very best 
landlords of these classes can possibly do, is to 
adopt a liberal scale of rents, to institute a com- 
prehensive system of improvement, to subordi- 
nate their proprietorial influence primely to their 
tenants’ well-being and but secondarily to their 
own emolument, and to delegate their power of 
management only to such agents as shall fairly 
represent them on their estates, and act with 
kindness, probity, and paternal feeling among 
the people; and when such a course as this is 
established and pursued, it not only goes far and 
perhaps all lengths to indemnify the tenants for 
the absenteeism, but eventually tends to even 
the superior pecuniary advantage of the proprie- 
| tors. The Duke of Devonshire, the Earl Fitz- 
william, and several of the landowner Companies 
| of Londonderry —though constant absentees 
from their Irish estates—are admitted, on all 
hands, to be real benefactors to their tenantry 
and to the community at large; and they may be 
easily shown to have eventually lost not one 
|| farthing by their wise and benignant policy. 
Asa general rule, however, the frequent and 
even stated residence of landowners is, always in 
some degree, and very often in the highest de- 
gree, essential to both the prosperity of their 
people and the fair conservation of their estates. 
A tenantry, except in extraordinary circum- 
stances, always conduct their farming operations 
in the best manner for both themselves and the 
land, when they act under the notice, and espe- 
| cially under the personal encouragement of their 
landlords. Absenteeism is often occasioned by 
mere caprice, love of dissipation, indifference to 
home, a morbid passion for change, or a roving 
fondness for foreign scenes and objects; it some- 
times arises from no worse cause than inconsid- 
eration, or a practical ignorance of a landlord’s 
ABSENTEEISM. 
11 
responsibilities to his people, and true interest 
in his estates; and, even when arising from 
circumstances which perfectly justify it or 
render it inevitable, it frequently is uncom- 
pensated by a system of agency sufficiently 
enlightened in policy and liberal in feeling ;— 
and in all these cases, comprehending the vast 
majority of the multitudinous instances in which 
it exists, absenteeism must be pronounced an 
enormous evil ;—it breaks up some of the most 
important natural connexions of society,— it 
withdraws from a district a large amount of 
the capital produced in it, or of the product of 
its labour, or of its only true and staminal 
wealth, and expends this in places with which it 
has little or no community of interest,—it either 
compels shopkeepers and artisans to struggle 
with the utmost discouragement and poverty, or 
obliges them to withdraw their useful avocations 
from the aid of the local farmers,—it withholds 
sanction from industry, countenance from honest 
emulation, and stimulus from zeal and enter- 
prise,—it permits land to be maltreated, fertile | 
soils to be scourged to exhaustion, lawns and 
reserved fields to be driven to waste, and enclo- 
sures, plantations, and farm-buildings to be 
dilapidated and destroyed,—it sets up a be- 
witching and powerful example of unconcern for | 
the social good, and operates as a silent yet sure | 
seduction to a morbid state of moral feeling,— 
it shows the tenant that no care is entertained | 
for him by his superior, and teaches him, in re- 
turn, to entertain little care for his inferiors,— 
it does him the monstrous indignity of estimat- | 
ing his value only by the brute force he uses in | 
extracting produce from the soil, and in conse- 
quence either destroys his self-respect, or incites | 
him to despise his landlord, and probably con- 
temn all the wealthy and the educated classes of 
society,—it deprives him of sympathy in trouble, 
of assistance in difficulty, of support in momen- | 
tary poverty, and of protection and guidance in | 
a season of distress and insurrection,—it allows | 
the local magistracy to be held by agents or un- | 
derlings, throws down all hindrances to the influx 
of evil counsellors, and creates a powerful predis- | 
position to lawlessness and disturbance,—and | 
thus, if it do not provoke open outrage and un- 
blushing vice, it will at the least nurse disaffec- | 
tion, deteriorate property, and convert a body of 
men who might have been pre-eminently and com- 
fortably industrious into a ragged rabble of 
heartless sluggards. “Circumstances,” 
Mr. Martin Doyle, “may in some instances alle- 
viate the evil; but it requires little more than 
the passing eye of compassion, to mark and | 
establish the principle evinced,—on the one | 
hand, by the order, industry, and comfort of 
those within the sphere of residing influence,— | 
and on the other, by the squalid negligence, the 
lounging laziness, and despairing aspect of a ten- 
antry, without a landlord to whom they might 
apply for counsel, encouragement, indulgence, 
remarks | 
Seah ae 
SS aaa eee 
