e at the present time. He says, 'It is very
discouraging for a wealthy farmer to have anything to do with church
lands, as his improvements cannot even be secured to him during his
own life, or the life of his landlord, but he may at any time be
deprived of the fruits of his industry, by the incumbent changing his
living, as his interest then terminates.' This evil was remedied first
by making the leases renewable, on the payment of fines, and, in our
own time, an act was passed enabling the tenants to convert their
leaseholds into perpetuities. The consequence is, that the church
lands now present some of the finest features in the social landscape,
occupied by a class of resident gentry, an essential link, in any
well-organised society, between the people and the great proprietors.
The Board of Trinity College felt so strongly the necessity of giving
fixed tenures, if permanent improvements were to be effected on their
estates, that, without waiting for a general measure of land reform,
they obtained, in 1861, a private act of parliament giving them power
to grant leases for ninety-nine years. 'The legislature,' says Dr.
Hancock, 'thus gave partial effect in the case of one institution to
the recommendation which the Land Occupation Commissioners intended to
apply to all estates in the hands of public boards in Ireland.'

Armagh was always free from middlemen. The landlord got what Sir
Charles Coote calls a rack rent from the occupying tenant, and it
was his interest to divide rather than consolidate farms, because the
linen trade enabled the small holder to give a high rent, while
the custom of tenant-right furnished an unfailing security for its
payment.

The country, when seen from an elevation, is one continuous patchwork
of corn, potatoes, clover, and other artificial grasses. Wonders
are wrought in the way of productiveness by rotation of crops and
house-feeding. Cattle are not only fattened much more rapidly than on
the richest grazing land, but large quantities of the best manure are
produced by the practice of house-feeding. The more northern portions
of the county, bordering on Down and Lough Neagh, and along the banks
of the rivers Bann and Blackwater, are naturally rich, and have been
improved to the highest degree by ages of skilful cultivation. But
other parts, particularly the barony of Fews, embracing the high
lands stretching to the Newry mountains, and bordering on the County
Monaghan, were, about