e owner of the estate; all his plans, his plots, his
machinations, had no other end or object. From the deepest stroke of his
policy, to the most trivial act of his power, he had held this in view.
By his artful management a veil was intercepted between the landlord and
the people, which no acuteness on either side could penetrate. The very
acts intended as benefits by the owner of the soil, passed through such
a medium, that they diverged from their destined direction, and fell,
less as blessings than inflictions. The landlord was taught to regard
the tenant, as incurably sunk in barbarism, ignorance, and superstition.
The tenant to suppose the landlord, a cruel, unfeeling task-master, with
no care but for his rent; neither sympathy for their sufferings, nor
sorrow for their calamities. Hemsworth played his game like a master;
for while obtaining the smallest amount of rental for his chief, he
exacted the most onerous and impoverishing terms from the people. Thus
diminishing the apparent value of the property, he hoped one day to
be able to purchase, and at the same time preparing it for becoming a
lucrative and valuable possession, for although the rents were nominally
low, the amount of fees and "duty-labor" were enormous. There was
scarcely a man upon the property whose rent was paid to the day and
hour, and for the favour of some brief delay, certain services were
exacted, which virtually reduced the tenants to a vassalage the most
miserable and degrading.

If, then, the eye ranged over a district of a poverty-struck and
starving peasantry, with wretched hovels, naked children, and rude,
unprofitable tillage, let the glance but turn to the farm around "the
Lodge," and, there, the trim fences, the well-weeded corn, and the
nicely-cultivated fields, were an evidence of what well-directed labour
could effect; and the astounding lesson seemed to say:--Here is an
object for imitation. Look at yonder wheat: see that clover, and the
meadow beyond it. They could all do likewise. Their land is the same,
the climate the same, the rent the same; but yet ignorance and obstinacy
are incurable. They will not be taught--prefer their own barbarous ways
to newer and better methods--in fact, are beyond the lessons of either
precept or example.

Yet what was the real case? To till that model-farm, to make these
fields the perfection you see them, families were starving--age, left
to totter to the grave, uncared-for--manhood, pining