Then, if that convenient view is acquiesced in, the party submitting is called a “good landlord” (which in too many instances only means a great fool), until some other favour is refused, when the hundredth one denied obliterates the recollection of the ninety-nine conferred, and he sinks into a “rank bad un.” The best landlord, we imagine, is he who lets his land on fair terms, and keeps his tenants well up to the mark both with their farming and their payments. At present the landlords are too often a sort of sleeping partners with their tenants, sharing with them the losses of the bad years without partaking with them in the advantages of the good ones. “Ah, it’s all dom’d well,” we fancy we hear Sir Moses Mainchance exclaim, “saying, ‘keep them up to the mark,’ but how d’ye do it? how d’ye do it? can you bind a weasel? No man’s tried harder than I have!” We grant that it is difficult, but agriculture never had such opportunities as it has now. The thing is to get rid of the weasels, and with public companies framed for draining, building, doing everything that is required without that terrible investigation of title, no one is justified in keeping his property in an unproductive state. The fact is that no man of capital will live in a cottage, the thing therefore is to lay a certain number of these small holdings together, making one good farm of them all, with suitable buildings, and, as the saying is, let the weasels go to the wall. They will be far happier and more at home with spades or hoes in their hands, than in acting a part for which they have neither capital, courage, nor capacity. Fellows take a hundred acres who should only have five, and haven’t the wit to find out that it is cheaper to buy manure than to rent land. This is not a question of crinoline or taste that might be advantageously left to Mrs. Pringle; but is one that concerns the very food and well being of the people, and landlords ought not to require coaxing and patting on the back to induce them to partake of the cheese that the commercial world offers them. Even if they are indifferent about benefiting themselves they should not be regardless of the interests for their country. But there are very few people who cannot spend a little more money than they have. Let them “up then and at” the drainage companies, and see what wonders they’ll accomplish with their aid! We really believe the productive powers of the country might be quadrupled. CHAPTER XXXI. SIR MOSES’S MENAGE.—DEPARTURE OF FINE BILLY. 235m _Original Size_