A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept. The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not mean to pay his next term. (_I don’t think I will pay this gale._) His landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’ rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then become a proprietor. He refuses. Why? “Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!... _Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!_...” * * * * * Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters. The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed. The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable in cut. “That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide says to me; “it is to see tenants come in this style to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty guineas upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent arrives, coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their half-year’s rent....” “... And in fact it must be enough to make a saint swear!...” he adds philosophically. “But after all, the landlords might be content with the 60 per cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap enough ... they may think themselves lucky to have even that much, as the interest of confiscated land!...” That notion of the land being held by its actual detentors through confiscation, may be unfounded in some cases, or even in the majority of cases, but none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of the premiss is of little importance; what matters only is the conclusion drawn from it. * * * * * A few middling and small farmers.