The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing, because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any profit to anybody. Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes, they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents? That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats, barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to 35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to refuse to execute its articles. A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all discourses.