amekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places
belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant
employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over L4000. Were * *
* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all this outlay would come to
an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are,
while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the
same men, as farmers' labourers, would receive, now and then, five
shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of
our afternoon's drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had
probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least
seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November
to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as
well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have
been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the
afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat,
cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good
people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century.
Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement
prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been
discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates
about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason
for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most
friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed,
little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I
went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly
furnished--with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf,
and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the
working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser
squires.

I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds.
"Yes, sir!" he answered: "it's a very good place it is, and * * * * has
built it just to please us."

"But I am told you want to leave it?"

"Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We've three children you
see, sir, in America--two girls and a boy we have."

"And where are they?"

"Ah, the girls they're not in any factory at all. They're like leddies,
living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he
was on