These owners are those whose debts compel them to get something out of their land. They either attempt to farm them themselves, or they make leases at a rent just low enough to induce their tenants to continue. [Illustration: MEATH LADS AT CROSSAKEEL.] But there is another class that is not so merciful--or rather who are not compelled to be just, and the English nobleman is never just except upon compulsion. These are the drones who are actually rich, and have an income from some plunder outside of their lands. They will not make leases at all, for fear of losing the game! They want this beautiful land to grow up into shelter for hares and birds and all that sort of thing, for the sake of the pleasure of shooting in the season. The distress of the evicted tenant--eviction by reason of exorbitant rent is as certain as eviction for non-payment--is nothing to them. They must have their preserves of game; they must have their sport. The process is the same in England as it is in Ireland. The landlord puts his estates in the hands of an agent, selecting for the purpose a man with a heart of flint and a face of brass, one who knows no mercy, and who would not do a kind act were he paid for it. The tenant appeals to him for a reduction, but he might as well ask mercy of a tiger. Then in his despair goes to the landlord. "My good sir," says the landlord, beaming upon him benevolently, "I know nothing about these things. The matter is entirely in the hands of Mr. Smithson, my agent. Go to him." "But I have been to him and he will do nothing." "Really I regret it. But Mr. Smithson knows all about it--I don't. If he, with a knowledge of the situation--that is what he is there for--can do nothing, I cannot. I am not to be expected to know anything about it, nor can I meddle with business that is his." And the poor devil of a tenant, with the prospect of starving on the land or emigrating from the only place on earth which to him is a home, goes away sadly, and My Lord or the Rev., as the case may be, drops his agent a note, saying:--"Jobson was here to get a reduction of his rent. He will stay, and can be made to pay. Be firm with him." Then the agent tells Jobson that lowering the rent is out of the question--and Jobson stays, for he does not want to leave. He buys his artificial manures and his fertilizers from the agent, for he can get credit nowhere else, the agent has a handsome commission from the manufacturer, and so between the agent and the landlord, the manufacturer and the usurer, and the rest of them, Jobson works fourteen hours a day only in the end to either lie down and die or by the help of friends get away to America. [Sidenote: THE COST OF "SPORT."]