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good farming have been disregarded. I can remember thinking, at the time I was beginning to improve, that ten years of such outlay as I was making would put the estate in reasonably good condition. The outlay has now continued for over thirty years, and I see it will take the rest of my life, and all my son's life, to put the estate in proper order. I have already said everything had to be done-not only draining and reclamation of waste, but roads, fences (endless old fences to be removed, and new ones, that will really fence, to be made), buildings of all sorts (with the rare exception of one here and there), gates, and all else. Besides, much of the land was in such a state of exhaustion from previous illuse, that only a series of manuring and good farming could bring it into an average state. This is the case with the more distant parts of the farms even of thriving tenants. The manuring has been only of some fields near the house that gave least trouble.

Although the outlay by some landowners has been so considerable, even a cursory traveller through Ireland can see how back. ward still is the condition of most parts of the land, and how much remains to be done to it. Those who understand land in England are aware how large a part of the fee-simple value of most estates represents the outlay of capital in these visible improvements drains, roads, fences, buildings, &c. Yet it is notorious that even in England a very much further outlay of capital still is needed for such things. In Ireland hitherto nearly all that has been spent on such improvements has been spent by the landowners. Their outlay on improvements is going on still, whilst the outlay by tenants is yearly growing less, because of the increasing wages of labourers. What improved farming there is among

tenants is the effect of the example of the landowners and their Scotch bailiffs. When I began thirty-five years ago, there was not a turnip grown on the estate, nor any clover, except patches as large as a pockethandkerchief. A Scotchman had to be sent to teach their growth, and much else done to stop in part the advancing ruin from exhaustive crops and no food for stock. The present better state of things has been caused by the famine primarily, and by the example since of the landowners. Anyone who has lived through and seen the process as I have done can have no doubt of the causes.

The assumption now is that the capital of the landowners can be dispensed with for the permanent improvement of the land, and their knowledge and intelligence as well, whether personal or drawn from the best farmed districts of Scot. land and England. The tenants, it is said, are able to do all for themselves.

Such a view only needs to be put forth in plain words. It can gain attention only from such as have no knowledge of the subject. There is no difficulty in showing that the whole capital of the tenants, if applied to the best advantage, could not do a tenth part of what is wanted. The capital of the tenants is not near enough for manuring alone the land they hold, if nothing more was wanted. There are about 15 millions of acres of cultivated land in Ireland. The total deposits in all the banks in Ireland in 1875 were under 30 millions, and in Savings Banks under 2 millions = 32 millions. It is certain much of this does not belong to tenants. Thirteen millions has been often stated as the amount of the savings of tenants. Let anyone add what he likes for the sum tenants may have otherwise. Let him deduct what he likes for the number of acres out of 151

millions occupied by landowners (half a million would be a large deduction), and then let him reckon how far tenants' capital would go in manuring the rest. It would be little over il. per acre on the whole. The amount really needed would be over 51. per acre, for each manuring alone, repeated three or four times at intervals of say five years. Let it be further remembered that money laid out judiciously in manuring often returns in from two to five years and pays 20 per cent. a return of 10 per cent. may be surely reckoned on; whilst money spent in permanent improvements of land pays well if it returns 5 per cent. per annum.

Manuring is only one of the proper improvements for which tenants' capital is required. Better stock and implements, more and better paid labour, all need a large expenditure of capital not less than the cost of manuring. It is a fact of great significance that tenants now hardly ever keep a good labourer. They grudge the needful wages, and only employ, at low wages, the worst of the labourers, who are dear at any price, and are physically unable to do a fair day's work, or anything except light jobbing. The good labourers are employed by the landowners, or work about towns, where wages are better.

I believe it is strictly demonstrable that to turn the present landowners into annuitants, and make the tenants owners of their farms, would not only be most injurious to the country (especially to the labourers), but the worst thing that could happen for the tenants themselves. The visible improvements needed by the land have to be done by some one. By no skill can they be done at better profit than 5 per cent. on the capital laid out. the tenant has the capital to do them, he can make much more out of it by spending it on manure and

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better farming; and if he borrows the capital for improvements, it is sure to cost him, directly or indirectly, much more than 5 per cent.

But the case is much stronger than this. There are few tenants at present who have either the knowledge or skill or the qualities needed for laying out capital to advantage. Ignorance and idleness and want of energy are the faults of all but a small minority. The farming is almost always done too late, and carelessly, to a degree that much interferes with the profit, both from crop and stock, whilst it would have cost no more to do it rightly and in the time. I have repeatedly known, when land has been reclaimed by the owner, that the tenant was unable to do the ploughing and cultivation needful for cropping it. The state of the case is just what is found in every backward country. To call Irish tenants farmers in the sense in which that word is used of the tenants in England and Scotland is a misuse of the word. The knowledge of all but a small minority is little more than how to grow a crop of lazybed potatoes and some inferior corn afterwards. Even their stock is usually very badly managed.

Yet it is men in this state of ignorance, and with the limited capital I have mentioned, whom it is proposed to make the substantial owners gratis of all the land in the country, and to trust to them to do all improvements, and raise the condition of the country and its people, and develop the industry of the labouring classes.

It must be borne in mind that permanent improvements paying 5 per cent. on their cost make a fair return to the landlord. Such outlay is steadily going on, though not so fast as is desirable. What is wanted is to hasten it and enlarge it. The total sum required to be thus laid out cannot be less than 10l. per acre-150 millions of capi

tal on fifteen millions of acres, and perhaps very much more.

The figures I have stated are only approximations, to enable it to be realised how very large the sum to be laid out is, and so how great the difficulties to be met are.

I think few can doubt that there is need for all the capital, and all the knowledge and skill of both landlords and tenants for generations, to improve the Irish soil. Neither class can do without the other, and the true and right division of labour is for tenants to use their capital in good farming and manuring, and leave to landowners the permanent improvements, which can pay only a moderate interest on the outlay, and that this course will yield the most profit to both classes. A common and positive assertion, however, remains, that rents in Ireland are very high. This, too, is absolutely untrue.

The Ordnance valuation of Ireland was made about 1840. The average prices of farm produce in twelve chief towns of Ireland were taken as the basis, viz. corn, butter, pork, beef, and mutton.

The present prices of butter, pork, beef, and mutton are nearly double those averages, and the price of oats (the corn chiefly grown) is also very much higher. The price of young stock, both sheep and cattle, is more than double, as is too the price of horses. The great increase in the quantity of all these grass-products, and relative decrease of corn, adds much to the gain farmers are making. In most parts the Ord

nance valuation at the time it was made was notoriously from 15 to 25 per cent. below the fair letting value.

Yet rents have so far risen very little, not nearly in proportion to the increased price of farm produce. An increase of 50 per cent. in the rent is looked on as a large and sufficient rise by the stiffest landowners. Very few get it.

When this rise in the value of farm produce is urged, the only answer attempted is, that the wages of labonr have risen too. This is true. But very little labour is needed for raising grass-products, and as a fact all, except the larger farmers, holding 100 acres and upwards, manage mainly now with the labour of their own families, and only cultivate as much as the strength of these permits. It is a curious and remarkable change. But in fact the rise in wages is only an excuse. The work done is not dearer in proportion to the higher wages paid for doing it. The increased knowledge and skill of the farmers (for in spite of their still great backwardness, there is some increased skill and knowledge, as in growing a few turnips for winter food, less frequently repeated corn crops, somewhat better manuring) much more than make up for the higher wages, and the use and cheapness of artificial manures are a great advantage too. The increased price of produce is thus, in most part, a clear gain.

Another proof of the increased value of land is seen in the increasing extent that the smaller class of landowners (say, up to 5,000 acres) are farming on their own account. It is certain owners would not keep land on their own hands unless more was thus made than by letting it.

In truth, many of us are making largely by so farming on our own account. For one, I can say that I find it a very profitable way of managing land, and for years I have made a net return from about 1,000 acres in hand, of double the rent I should have got from tenants, whilst the land at the same time is steadily improving in condition, and promises a still better return in future years. My accounts have been very accurately kept for over twenty years, and leave no doubt on the point. Mine is no exceptional case; the profits

of all holding land in the same way are as good, in proportion as they understand the business of farming, and farm well. The condition of the few tenants who farm even moderately well is a clear evidence to the same effect.

There never was a time in the memory of anyone living when Irish tenants were making so much money, or rents so well paid. The great prices given for the occupancy of farms held under the Ulster Tenant Right is another clear proof of the same. When fifteen to twenty years' rent is paid for the right of occupation again and again, it is quite clear it can only be because the rent to which the farm is liable is very low, and there is a large saleable profit to the tenant over and above the rent. Nothing else could explain the continuance of

such prices. One foolish purchaser might, no doubt, be found willing to give more than the value, but it could not go on for long.

What I have said does not apply to Ulster, where a quite different system grew up with the consent, and often assistance, of the landowners. A large proportion of the tenants of Ulster had bought their farms under the Tenant Right custom with the consent of the landlords, and could not justly, therefore, be deprived of what they had paid for. The tenants in other parts who have paid nothing have no shadow of claim to such a right. Neither does what I have said apply to the very limited class of tenants of large farms. These are in the same position as farmers of like extent in England and Scotland.

W. BENCE JONES.

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BARBADOS.

HE rise of the British Empire in

lopment of our Australasian colonies, may be regarded as amongst the principal causes of the comparative political obscurity into which our possessions in the West Indies have gradually sunk. But, even politically, their importance has not expired, and their sometime diversity of local government has been of no inconsiderable value in solving constitutional problems elsewhere.

The oldest of these colonies in the Caribbean Sea, and the only one which has never changed masters, but has, from first to last, been subject to the British Crown, is Barbados-the most 'windward,' or easterly, island in the archipelago, being situated in 13° 4' N. lat., and 59° 37′ W. long. It is scarcely 21 miles in length, and 14 in breadth, with an area of 106,470 acres, and a population of not less than 180,000. With St.Vincent, Grenada, Tobago, and St. Lucia it is included in the group of the Windward Islands.'

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On its western side the general aspect of Barbados is not unlike that of parts of the Sussex coast, but it gradually rises in a richly culti vated inclined plane, until, on its eastern shores, bold bluffs, 'edges,' as they would be called in Staffordshire, such as that of Hacklestone's Cliff, tower above the narrow belt of verdure between them and the sea. At the northern extremity of the island, however, and in the parish of St. Lucy, the character of grandeur which the scenery presents cannot well be surpassed. Here the coralline cliffs, rising in some places to a height of 120 feet, are exposed to the booming waves of the Atlantic, which, even in fine

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weather, strike against them with an

wreaths of spray to the plain above. Midway down these precipices, and only approachable by a perilous natural ladder, is a gallery of caverns-called by the inhabitants The Animal Flower Caves,' from a beautiful species of zoophyte found in them-the entrance into which is attended with much danger, and in consequence they are but rarely visited.1

But Barbados is not without its softer beauties; although, for the most part, denuded of those leafy coverts which, in the other islands, perpetuate the system of squatting, and with an artificial soil too costly to be restored to nature, there are still to be seen bits of charming landscape, where wild flowers may be gathered. We find picturesque parish churches-as, for instance, that of St. James, 'bosomed high in tufted trees'— which recall to the mind their prototypes in rural England; while such a lordly Elizabethan house as that of St. Nicholas would demand our admiration anywhere.

'Yarico's Pond' is also a pretty spot, and claims an additional interest as the closing scene of the story, so affectingly told in Addison's Spectator, of Inkle's perfidy. Another place of interest is 'Christ Church,' famous in the literature of 'spiritualism.' And yet another is the parish church of St. John, where, many years ago, was found the vault of Ferdinand, the son of Theodore Palæologus, representative of the great, but now extinct, imperial house which fell with the Byzantine Empire. Ferdinand lived in Barbados in the seventeenth

The writer of this paper explored them.

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