a system of
taking duty-work, in fact, in a new form. They had cottiers
(cottagers), day-labourers established in cottages, on their estate,
usually near their own residence. Many of these cabins were the
poorest habitations that can be imagined; and these were given rent
free, that is, the rent was to be worked out on whatever days, or on
whatever occasions, it was called for. The grazing for the cow, the
patch of land for flax, and the ridge or ridges of potato land were
also to be paid for in days' labour in the same manner. The
uncertainty of this tenure at will, that is, at the pleasure of the
landlord, with the rent in labour and time, variable also at his
pleasure or convenience, became rather more injurious to the tenant
than the former fixed mode of sacrificing so many days' duty-work,
even at the most hazardous seasons of the year.

'My father wished to have entirely avoided this cottager system; but
he was obliged to adopt a middle course. To his labourers he gave
comfortable cottages at a low rent, to be held at will from year to
year; but he paid them wages exactly the same as what they could
obtain elsewhere. Thus they were partly free and partly bound. They
worked as free labourers; but they were obliged to work, that they
might pay their rent. And their houses being better, and other
advantages greater, than they could obtain elsewhere, they had a
motive for industry and punctuality; thus their services and their
attachment were properly secured. . . . My father's indulgence as to
the time he allowed his tenantry for the payment of their rent was
unusually great. He left always a year's rent in their hands: this
was half a year more time than almost any other gentleman in our
part of the country allowed. . . . He was always very exact in
requiring that the rents should not, in their payments, pass beyond
the half-yearly days--the 25th of March and 29th of September. In
this point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom
ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . .
They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord,
and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently
bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took
especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in
punishing as well as of his desire to reward.

'Where the offender was tenant, and the punisher landlord, it rarely
happened, even if the law reached t