which he may entail lasting misery on many more? It is in this way too many country gentlemen neglect their moral obligations. "It is a manifest inconvenience to country gentlemen, when taking a prominent part in county matters without a competent knowledge of agriculture, to be obliged to apologise for not having sufficiently attended to agricultural affairs. Such an avowal is certainly candid, but is anything but creditable to those who have to make it. When elected members of the legislature, it is deplorable to find so many of them so little acquainted with the questions which bear directly or indirectly on agriculture. On these accounts, the tenantry are left to fight their own battles on public questions. Were landowners practically acquainted with agriculture, such painful avowals would be unnecessary, and a familiar acquaintance with agriculture would enable the man of cultivated mind at once to perceive its practical bearing on most public questions." And what he says respectively of the ignorant and skilful factor or agent is quite as deserving of attention. Not merely whole estates, but in some parts of the island, whole counties lag in arrear through the defective education and knowledge of the agents as a class:-- "A still greater evil, because less personal, arises on consigning the management of valuable estates to the care of men as little acquainted as the landowners themselves with practical agriculture. A factor or agent, in that condition, always affects much zeal for the interest of his employer. Fired by it, and possessing no knowledge to form a sound judgment, he soon discovers something he considers wrong among the poorer tenants. Some rent perhaps is in arrear--the strict terms of the lease have been deviated from--the condition of the tenant seems declining. These are favourable symptoms for a successful contention with him. Instead of interpreting the terms of the lease in a generous spirit, the factor hints that the rent would be better secured through another tenant. Explanation of circumstances affecting the actual condition of the farm, over which he has, perhaps, no control,--the inapplicability, perhaps, of peculiar covenants in the lease to the particular circumstances of the farm--the lease having perhaps been drawn up by a person ignorant of agriculture,--are excuses unavailingly offered to a factor confessedly unacquainted with country affairs, and the result ensues in disputes betwixt him and the tenant. To explanations, the landlord is _unwilling_ to listen, in order to preserve intact the authority of the factor; or, what is still worse, is _unable_ to interfere, because of his own inability to judge of the actual state of the case betwixt