he family of the small holder attends to every hour of
the day, often in the night--and which give work to women and children
as well as the men--work of the most healthful character and most free
from demoralizing influences.

On a farm of fifteen to thirty acres there is constant employment of
a profitable kind for the members of a household, including women and
children. The effect of good drainage is that farming operations can
be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in
wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are
high. Oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in
turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the
hay-making, and all the harvest operations. It is by the ceaseless
activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs,
&c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, and that towns
grow up and prosper. If Down and Antrim had been divided into farms
of thousands of acres each, like Lincolnshire, what would Belfast
have become? Little more than a port for the shipping of live stock
to Liverpool and Glasgow. Before the famine, the food of the small
farmers was generally potatoes and milk three times a day, with a bit
of meat occasionally. But salt herrings were the main reliance for
giving a flavour to the potato, often 'wet' and bad. After the failure
of the potatoes, their place was supplied by oatmeal in the form
of 'stirabout.' Indian meal was subsequently found cheaper and more
wholesome. But of late years the diet of the farmers in these parts
has undergone a complete revolution. There is such brisk demand for
butter, eggs, potatoes, and other things that used to be consumed
by the family, that they have got into the habit of taking tea, with
cakes and other home-made bread twice, or even three times, a day.
The demand for tea is, therefore, enormous. There is one grocer's
establishment in Belfast which has been able to produce a mixture that
suits the taste of the people, and the quantity of tea sold by it is
a ton a day. This is the business of but one out of many houses in
Belfast. Then there is the brisk trade in such towns as Newtownards,
Lisburn, Ballymena, &c. In pastoral districts the towns languish, the
people pine in poverty, and the workhouses are in request.

In a financial point of view, therefore, it is manifestly the interest
of the state to encourage 'the spirit of tillage.' It is thus