class with indifference, or approbation, the phenomenon is one which
political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which cannot
be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bringing railing
accusations against the nation.

Mr. Trench speaks with something like contempt or pity of 'good
landlords,' a class which he contradistinguishes from 'improving
landlords.' But it should be remembered that by this last phrase he
always means agents of the Trench stamp. For he observes that the
landlord himself cannot possibly do much more than authorize his agent
to do what he thinks best; and it is rather an advantage that the
proprietor should be an absentee, otherwise his good nature might
prompt him to interrupt the work of improvement. Now there is this to
be said of the good landlords, who may be counted by hundreds, and who
are found in all the counties of Ireland. Their estates are free from
the 'poetic turbulence' in which Mr. Trench is the 'stormy petrel.'
They preserved their tenants through the years of famine, and have
them still on their estates. Nor should the fact be omitted that among
those good landlords, who abhor the idea of evicting their tenants,
are to be found the lineal descendants of some of the most cruel
exterminators of the seventeenth century. Their goodness has
completely obliterated, among their people, the bitter memories of the
past. The present race of Celts would die for the men whose ancestors
shot down their forefathers as vermin. But the improving landlords run
their ploughshares through the ashes of old animosities, turning up
embers which the winds of agitation blow into flames. We seldom hear
of Ribbonism till the improving agent comes upon the scene, warring
against natural rights, warring against the natural affections,
warring against humanity, warring against the soul.