Left up among my country people in this hill country of Donegal, I set myself to see and to hear what they had to say for themselves or against their landlords. In the pauses of storm I walked up the mountains to see the people in their homes. I seem to have lost the power of description. I will never think of scenes I saw there without tears. I never, in Canada, saw pigs housed as I saw human beings here. Sickness, old age, childhood penned up in such places that one shuddered to go into them. Now, mark me! every hovel paid rent, or was under eviction for failing to pay. The landlord has no duties in the way of repairing a roof or making a house comfortable. Such a thing is utterly unknown here. To fix the rent, to collect the rent, to make office rules as whim or cupidity dictates, to enforce them, in many instances with great brutality, is the sole business of the landlord; and the whole power of the Executive of England is at his back. This is not a good school in which to learn loyalty. Submission to absolute decrees or eviction are the only alternative. The tenant has no voice in the bargain. He has no power to be one party to a contract. This irresponsible power of an autocrat over serfs of the soil is bad for both parties. I will try to tell these people's side of the question as nearly in their own words as I can. When the native population was driven off the good valley lands to the hills of Donegal during the confiscation times, they built their cabins in groups, like the Scotch _clachans_, for company, perhaps even for protection. Each man broke up, clearing off stones and rooting up whins, the best patch within his reach. He ditched and drained pieces of low-lying bog, and paid for what he cultivated, all the rest being common. By what title the Clemens of Leitrim got lordship over the wild hills as well as the fat lowlands I cannot tell; but all the country here, for miles and miles, up hill and down vale, is his. The people have absolutely no rights, far as the land is concerned. The first move towards this dreadful state of things was called "Squaring the farms." This was done to compel the people to pay for the wild as well as the cultivated lands. Under the old system a man might have a few goats or sheep, or a heifer, on the hills, and, if his crop was not good, or a hail storm threshed out his oats, he could sacrifice these to pay the rent. When the farms were squared each man drew lots for his new holding. I am speaking of Lord Leitrim's estate. This was a hard decree, but the tenant had no alternative but to submit. A man often found himself squared out of the best of his clearing, squared out of his cabin and all accommodation for his cow or horse, and squared on to a new place without any house on it at all.