"improving" landlord. The
farmer, who was evidently a local luminary on the land question, is
only a recent convert to Land League principles; but he was
nevertheless prepared to defend the cowardly kind of general strike
against an individual, known as "Boycotting." He also talked a great
deal about fair rents and the compulsion that farmers are under to pay
anything that their landlords choose to ask. Yet this very man was,
not long since, offered the profitable farm he now occupies in the
place of smaller and less convenient holdings. Asked by his landlord
what he thought he ought to pay, he offered two and a half times
Griffith's valuation, and on the landlord asking him three times that
rate, agreed with him to "split the difference," and was, or appeared
to be, satisfied. But at that moment he had not been made conscious of
his wrongs, and of his down-trodden, serf-like condition. He is fully
aware of them now, and, in plain English, is prepared to make the best
of the present opportunity.

As the possible peasant proprietor of the future is a personage much
discussed among landlords and others just how, I thought it well to
consult the farmer as well as the legal and proprietorial minds on
this important subject. I was at once struck by the "so far and no
farther" tone, so to speak, of the larger farmers. According to many
of those I consulted, no greater disaster could occur to Ireland than
the creation of peasant proprietors. I will endeavour to give, as
nearly as possible, the exact words of farmers whose ideas concerning
the claims of their own class are of the most advanced I have heard.

The instant I asked a question concerning the peasant-proprietor
problem and the future of the "poor devil" cottiers, whose sufferings
have made an excellent stalking-horse for the farmers, properly
so-called, I was met with a well-formulated objection to any scheme of
peasant proprietorship. The cottier _pauvre diable_ appears, I
apprehend, to the farmers as a labourer, and they therefore look with
anything but favour upon a scheme for raising the poor peasants above
the necessity of working for them, by giving the poor a real stake in
the country. The farmers hold that, unless some stringent regulations
against subdividing or subletting be adopted and firmly enforced, the
creation of peasant proprietors on an extensive scale will be the
greatest misfortune that ever befell Ireland; as in the course of time
it will crea