The farmer of Cork and Tipperary has nothing to say about himself, his wife or his children. If the son of the thief who stole his land loses money at bacaret in Paris, he telegraphs the other thief, his agent, that he wants money, and the secondary thief, who has a percentage in the robbery, goes about among the tenants, and raises the rent. And that is all there is about it. The tenant farmer has no lease. He lives upon the land at the pleasure of his landlord, and the measure of the rent he pays is the measure of the landlord's vices and the agent's expectations. Each county has its own "custom," and the poor, robbed slave lives under that custom. The North of Ireland farmer comes nearer to keeping body and soul together than the South of Ireland farmer, because the villain robbers who expelled the Irish from the North of Ireland had to make a custom more favorable to get the Scotch and English to go there to keep the Catholic Irish in check, and they would not have gone to the country except for some advantage. An English lord will do anything mean for the love of it--the Scotch are altogether too acute to do a mean thing without being paid for it. An instance, not a very large one, but enough to illustrate the power of the landlord over his victim, the tenant, occurred upon the estate of My Lord Leitrim, who is this minute where I hope never to go if there is a hereafter. This worthy descendant of a very unworthy race had an industrious tenant, whose farm he had been long coveting. But somehow he did not dare to take it by force, with the feeling there was in the country at the time, and so he sought a legal pretext. An Irish tenant is not permitted by the paternal government, under which he starves and goes naked, to make any improvements without the consent of the landlord. He cannot build an addition to his cabin (this condition is unnecessary, for he couldn't if he would), he cannot dig a ditch or do anything. This is the law, but it has never been enforced, for in the very nature of things the tenant would not do more than was profitable to himself for the improvement of the land is the enrichment of the landlord, who religiously raises the rent with every improvement made. [Sidenote: A FOILED LANDLORD.] This tenant needed a ditch preparatory to the reclamation of a bog farther back, and he had been putting in all his spare time for two years digging it. He did not suppose that My Lord would object to his reclaiming the bog. [Illustration: THE FILLING OF THE DITCH.] One Saturday Mike was working in the ditch up to his knees in water when My Lord came riding by. He saw his opportunity. He knew the law. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Making the drain, sor," replied Pat, proudly, for it was a big thing he had undertaken. "Who gave you permission to make a ditch on my land?" demanded My Lord. "My fine fellow, you have that dirt all back by Monday morning, or out you go."