social superiority, in 1852
went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin.

Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough
that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between
savage squalor and civilisation.

Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began
its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by
whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George's
death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported
sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a
considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and
sheep.

Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by
Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way.
Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the National
League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency,
and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings
to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880
damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an
opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the
people in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generous
response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him
from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to
Gweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became a
standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed,
naturally enough,--a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to
pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the
National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British
Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and
against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to
respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at
Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least
can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have
been sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during the
period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district,
at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years'
purchase of the landlord's rent!

In this Blue-book th