revenge seems to sleep in the South; it is but the deceptive quiet of the serpent. There is still a "solid North" arrayed against a "solid South," as when the battalions of Grant faced those of Lee on many a gory battle-field. Perhaps the truest epitaph which could be inscribed on the grave-stone of the so-called Rebellion would be:

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."

J. M. FARRAR.

P.S.-The attempted assassination of President Garfield, which has occurred while these pages are going through the press, is worthy of remark here, as illustrating an antagonism of a powerful kind in force, though in quite a different direction, between the principle of Federalism, or an all but autocratic Central Government, and the modified rights, or rather claims, of individual States to a share of the patronage which is identical with power. General Garfield embodies the policy which maintains that all Federal offices throughout the Union shall be in the uncontrolled, as well as actual, gift of the Executive. This policy maintains the right of the Central Government to select, through its President, the best men for the positions in its gift in every State, and assumes in this way to inaugurate a thorough and much-needed civilservice reform. The opponents of this principle are practically the senators of the respective States, who naturally wish to retain the immense political influence and security of tenure afforded by the common system hitherto in vogue, of regarding their recommendations to the President for all vacant Federal offices in their respective States, as equivalent to nominations for the same. The appointment of General Arthur to the Vice-Presidency was understood to be a concession to the views of Mr. Conkling, who represents the system of senatorial nepotism, and the death of General Garfield would have raised General Arthur to the Presidency for the nearly four remaining years of the present term. The assassin Guiteau was but a representative of the horde of disappointed place-hunters, armed with recommendations and testimonials from their respective States, who haunt the purlicus of the Executive Mansion from March to July of every new Presidential term. Had his aim been as fatal as that of Booth, civil-service reform, the great need of American political life to-day, as peace was when Lincoln fell, would have been indefinitely postponed, and the vast territories of the United States have been ruled for years to come, by a man not chosen of the people for the Supreme Office of State, and who is supposed to represent the policy of States' patronage, which has proved a fruitful source of corruption, and which the election of General Garfield was meant to condemn.

MY ANSWER TO OPPONENTS.

So

OME answer will be expected from me to the statements of Father O'Leary in the article in your REVIEW for July.

It may not, I hope, be quite uninteresting, as a picture of the management of an improving Irish estate.

He

In substance, Father O'Leary is the local Land League in Clonakilty. He was its chairman, and almost the League itself, not one man of any character or influence belonging to it. The outrage of drawing away my labourers last December, and trying to starve the large head of stock on my farm, was managed by him and another priest. got the money to pay my labourers, going to Dublin to ask some of it from the Central League. It was he who instigated my tenants not to pay their rents; and when I had lately recovered judgment against the three largest tenants for above £450 rent, and the interest in their farms was put up to sale by the Sheriff in Cork, these two priests attended the sale, bid on behalf of the tenants, and got their costs paid by the Land League.

He is thus very far from being impartial. In truth, no one can read the article under his name, without seeing that its one object is to annoy and injure me to the utmost possible.

This being so, it is satisfactory to find that the men with the worst will towards me, have really nothing to say against my treatment of the many labourers and others in my employment. Paying, as I did, more than £1,300 a year in wages directly-and very much more indirectlyno complaint is made of my wages per week, the houses I provided, of arbitrary discharges, or getting rid of old men, of fines or pinchings of any sort, nor of the condition of my labourers and their families. The single complaint is, that my labourers had to get their breakfasts before going to work in the morning, and even that is but partly true.

In regard to my tenants, nothing is said of their being in poverty or distress, their houses inferior, and farms exhausted—a solitary case of an expiring lease excepted. The one complaint is, that in the last fifteen I have raised the rent of some. years It is, of course, kept out of sight that there had been no increase of rent for a great many years before, nor since the principal sorts of farm produce in Ireland had nearly doubled in price, and that the rise of rent was only made on fit occasions, and with the grant of new leases for thirty-one years. Any one who takes the trouble to look at Father O'Leary's statements will see that, in most cases, the rent charged has not been more than 20s. per acre. Such, in fact, with few exceptions, where the land is exceptionally good, has been all I have asked. The cases mentioned of

£2 and £3 per acre are those of town parks, accommodation land near the town, and let mostly to thoroughly thriving shopkeepers and traders in it, who are as independent in their class as I am. Similar land is let by others as high as £5 per acre.

When the tenants of these town parks want to manure them, they let them for con-acre potatoes to others in the town who do not hold land. These con-acre men pay the tenant £1 per acre, and find their own manure. My town parks at last are laid out in grass, and cows kept on them. The milk is sold in the town, at a higher price than English farmers receive who send their milk to London. From three to four acres, according to its condition, feed a cow; and as by thus selling the milk a fair cow will yield £15 to £16, it will be seen that £3 per acre for accommodation land of this kind is no undue rent. I have hardly ever known one of these town tenants dissatisfied with his holding. If he is dissatisfied, he has the complete remedy of giving up the land, as he has his trade to support him. By not mentioning that these holdings are town parks, Father O'Leary tries to give colour against me, without any just reason, of charging unduly high rents.

Further, much the larger number of the tenants he says I ejected, left of their own free will, during, and just after, the famine of 1846. During those years I gave an abatement of a quarter's rent to all. There was certainly no pressure on my part to get rid of tenants; on the contrary, it was a sore trouble to me. I did not then know how to make money out of the land. When the famine began, my tenants were far better off than most others, and suffered nothing in the first year; all had means enough to keep the wolf from the door. But when the potatoes failed

in the second spring, those whose land was much reduced saw they could not go on. I forgave all rent due, let them take away whatever stock they had, and gave a small sum besides to help them to emigrate. There were no ejectments; they went away of themselves. I have not had more than half-a-dozen ejectments in forty years. If any tenants who left were willing to work, I gave them work in plenty, often allowing them to stay in their old houses and work for me. These have lived in comfort and respectability much greater than when they held land. I

built twenty-two good cottages of two stories, and also repaired a few old farm-houses for labourers. I thus had between thirty and forty men employed until last winter. (During the famine, and after, I had more than a hundred men.) I had more men in regular employment than before held the land as tenants. The state of exhaustion to which tenants had reduced the land-having fairly worn it out by paring and burning and over-cropping-was the true cause of their ruin, as can be seen from the fact, that at first all I could make out of it for rent and interest was 8s. per acre. Father O'Leary implies that this was the value of the land. It was their own bad farming having exhausted the land, that drove them away when the potatoes failed. All this happened about the time Father O'Leary was born.

Happily, the

I will now take the cases he mentions in order. tenants and their farms are still there to be seen. I invite any indifferent person who understands land to see them for himself. 1 assert that at this moment, as a body, they are better off, and their farms in better condition, than any body of tenants in the county on the same number of acres.

(1.) Widow Dempsey, of Cloheen. When her father-in-law died he left her thirty-seven acres, in fair condition, and more than £200 in cash. In rearranging the land she lost five acres, not two-thirds of the farm, as Father O'Leary states. Her family consisted of two or three daughters nearly grown up. She was charged £2 per acre rent because the land was worth it. It is near enough to the town to get the benefit of town manure and selling milk. The thirty-two acres could feed eight cows, allowing some land for tillage. If the cows were let to a dairyman he would have been glad to pay £10 each, and give the best security for the rent = £80, from cows alone, whilst her rent was £64. Mrs. Dempsey and her daughters could have managed the cows as well as any dairyman, and with more profit. The dairyman would have lived out of the land, and made his profit besides, both of which gains. she might have had. Mrs. Dempsey was a silly woman, with neither industry nor sense. She married her daughters worse than badly, got rid of all her money, reduced the land, and was at last ejected for nonpayment of rent, not for misconduct. The twenty acres now in my own hands are rather far from the town for choice. The other twelve acres, for which she paid £2 per acre, have always since been held by a wealthy man in the town at £3 per acre. For the twenty acres I have been offered lately £2 per acre by a thriving man. I prefer holding them till better times.

(2.) Mrs. Brian, of Carrig, pays 20s. per acre for forty-four acres of excellent land. Her whole troubles come from her own and her sons' drinking and their grievous idleness. She has some children in America. So long as any one will pay her rent for her no doubt she will be glad of it. With the habits of herself and sons she can never thrive anywhere.

(3.) The Driscoll children, at Carrig, are next.

Their father was the

most "worthy" and indolent man I ever knew. He paid £60 a year for near sixty acres. He let his eight cows for £10 10s. each. He died leaving four young children, the eldest being sixteen. Their mother's brother had been in Australia, and by keeping an hotel brought home £30,000 (this I know from a Bank). He has a farm near Cork, and keeps his carriage. They have other uncles very well off. What could four children of this kind do as joint tenants of such a farm? I let them hold on at first, but soon they had not enough cows, so they ploughed the best grass fields for ley oats, and a bad harvest following, it made an end of them; they had neither corn to sell, nor grass for cows. Their uncles took the children amongst them, which it was plain from the first was much the best thing for them. They left because unable to pay the rent, and for no other cause. The uncles never offered to pay or secure the rent. I lost three half-years' rent, £75, by them.

it.

(4.) Edmond Lucey, of Cashalisky, was ejected nearly twenty years ago, having been tenant of one of the best farms I have, 118 acres, at £84 per annum. I offered it to him at 20s. per acre. He refused I gave time for consideration again and again. He still refused. He had a son a priest, and thought I should not dare to go against the priest's father. Though nominally tenant, he had really divided his farm between two sons who lived with him. When they left, each son hired a good-sized farm, of I believe more than fifty acres, a few miles away, where I am told they have done well. The first year I cleared for rent and interest from this farm more than the rent I asked them. Last year, 1880, I cleared £285, instead of £118 I asked. Old Lucey had still another farm of 47 acres, held by him from me for thirty-one years, at 58. 9d. per acre. This, a third son still holds. Father O'Leary says the very neighbours are in dread of me. I was driving home from Lucey's farm one day, after he was gone, when a man ran out of a house by the road-side, and dropped on his knees, holding up his hands, as if praying. I stopped to ask what he wanted. He answered, he was praying God for blessings upon me for having turned out Ned Lucey, who had injured him. I can say that he seemed very much in earnest.

(5.) On the same land, John Duggan is mentioned, though not by name. He holds thirty-two acres at 5s. 9d. per acre, £7 17s. per annum, for a thirty-one years lease. He never hinted to me that he wished to build a house. At such a rent I have no doubt he has money saved, and would like by any means to get his lease renewed at the same rent. When his lease is out I shall do all the improvements of all kinds wanted on the farm, and offer it to him at its honest value. If he lays out his money in manuring it, it is sure to give him four times as good a return as if he laid it out in permanent improvements. He is a backward, ignorant man, and very likely, with the priest's advice, will not choose to do right, which will be to his own loss.