er people can relet them at a profit, is a manifest absurdity.

Another practical view of the landlord mind is that it is foolish to
go on borrowing money under the Act of 1879 during the present
uncertain condition of tenure and impossibility of getting in rents.
Hence the Scariff drainage works, for which 34,000l. was to be
borrowed by the owners of the property affected by the scheme, have
been suddenly abandoned, and will not be carried any further, at least
during the present winter. One consequence of this decision will be to
throw a large number of people out of employ, who must either leave
Clare or ask for relief.

The first order of the landlord mind, however, is, to do it justice,
not affected very seriously by the present crisis. The great
landholders of Clare and Limerick are not in a heavily mortgaged or
downright insolvent condition. Like the wealthy manufacturer during a
strike, they do not care either to employ or to threaten harsh
measures against their tenants. There is time enough for the present
agitation to subside, as others have subsided, and if the Government
should wish to acquire their land and disestablish "landlordism," as
Mr. Parnell suggests, so much the better, especially since it has
become manifest by the example of the Marquis of Conyngham's estate
that purchasers, other than tenants, are hardly to be found for Irish
property. And--as the agent of a great absentee landholder observed to
me--of what avail would it be to proceed to ulterior measures against
the tenants? Granted that all the weary delays of the local courts
were got rid of by a Dublin writ, what would be the consequence? The
tenant would, unless he chose to spend his own ready money to defend
his case in Dublin, be swiftly ejected--that is, if sufficient police
were requisitioned to make any attempt at resistance absurd. The
landlord would get his own after a fashion; but unless he chose to
keep a force of police on his farms the dispossessed tenants would be
reinstated and their houses rebuilt by the mob; and nothing would be
got in the shape of rent. As no person in the possession of his senses
would take any farm from which a tenant had been evicted, the landlord
would have only one course to pursue. He must farm his land himself,
and then he would be "isolated" or "Boycotted." Nobody would work for
him; nobody would buy anything from his farms.

Everybody in Ennis knows the case of Littleton, whose farm is now
unde