existence of a middle class of remarkable independence of character,
and the accumulation of capital for manufactures and commerce. Had
Lord Donegal been able to hold the town in a state of tutelage and
dependence--had he been an 'improving landlord' of the modern type,
with an agent like Mr. Trench, so vigilant and curious that a dog
could not bark on the estate without his knowledge and consent,
Belfast might have been far behind Derry to-day--as stationary as
Bangor, Hillsborough, Antrim, or Randalstown. Under such paternal care
as Mr. Trench bestows upon tenants, with his omnipresent surveillance,
there could be no manly self-reliance, no freedom of speech or action,
no enterprise. The agent would take care that no interests should grow
up on the estate, which his chief could not control or knock down. It
is not likely that Lord Donegal would have suffered the landscape to
be spoiled, the atmosphere of the deer park and gardens to be darkened
and tainted by the smoke of factory chimneys, which could add nothing
to his rental, while crowding around him the race which his great
progenitor did so much to extirpate. So Belfast may well be thankful
that the Marquis of Donegal, for some generations, could not afford to
be 'an improving landlord,' fond of paternal intermeddling with other
people's affairs, playing the part of Providence to an inferior race.

But there is one memorable fact connected with those perpetuity leases
which applies more immediately to our purpose. The tenants who were
evicted to make way for the men who had money to advance to the lord
of the soil, feeling themselves seriously aggrieved, formed the first
of the more modern agrarian combinations under the title of 'the
Hearts of Oak;' which continued for a long time to disturb the peace
in Antrim and Down. The farms being extensively turned into pasture
by the landlords and large graziers, there was no employment for the
houseless wanderers, no provision of any kind for their support.