provoking me, and he was Archbishop Magee, of
whom I shall have something to say when I am dealing with County Cork.

For the Scots in character I conceived much respect and little
enthusiasm. If there is anything more remarkable than the hard-working
powers of the Scottish farmer it is his capacity for hard drinking. But
that only makes him offensive in his brief conviviality and morose in
the long subsequent sulkiness. Whereas I defy you to be seriously angry
with a drunken Irishman, if you have a due sense of humour--and without
that you have lost the salt of life. To my mind there is something
austere in the better characteristics of the Scot, and also something
hypocritical about his morality. You always hear that professed in
Scotland, and never in Ireland. But in the latter fewer illegitimate
children are born than in any other country in Europe, and in
Scotland--notably Glasgow--the high percentage has become sadly
proverbial. Yet, despite these adverse points, the Scottish character
has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, though all my
warmth of feelings goes to my own oft-erring countrymen.

I returned to Ireland in 1843 with the intention of farming in Kerry on
the scientific system I had learned in Berwickshire. However, I found
the land so subdivided that it was not only difficult, but impossible,
to obtain a farm of sufficient size to return a reasonable percentage on
the necessary outlay. The population of Kerry was then 293,880, and the
land was divided into 25,848 farms, the holders of which, I may say,
entirely depended for existence on 26,030 acres of potatoes. To give an
example of the intense love of subdivision, I knew a case where one
horse was the property of three 'farmers,' and as they differed as to
who was to pay for the fourth shoe, they sold the horse, which was
bought by an uncle of mine.

Few farmers ate meat except at Christmas. They wore homespun flannel and
frieze, and their only luxury, whisky, was obtainable at a quarter of
its present price. A young couple were considered ready to start in
married life when they had obtained a 'farm,' consisting of a couple of
acres for potatoes and a mud hovel for themselves; and thus a
population, dependent on a precarious root, increased very rapidly. It
was thicker near the sea coast than inland. The rents then were about
double what they are now (though half what they had been at the
beginning of the nineteenth century), yet, wi