the honest
investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by
the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit
alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land.

That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to
their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably
clear. On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the
salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more
favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring
opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have
no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It
is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the
land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes
the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if
they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up.
There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no
room for them they quietly "pull up stakes," and go forth to seek a new
home, no matter where.

For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he
received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations
between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the
main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up
their old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them." But
there were no "evictions"; rents were not raised even where the tenants
were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for
the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither
turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George
bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore
in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered
tillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding,
the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old
rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop
to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but
to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were
established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the
local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant's
wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a