neighbours, to detect violations of the 'rules of the estate.' It is
mainly through the spy-system that Mr. Steuart Trench, according to
his own avowal, won most of his victories over refractory tenants. For
example, on this estate he had a woman acting as a spy at the meetings
of the Ribbonmen; and he boasted that a dog could not bark at Farney
without his knowledge. I refer to this matter here again for the
purpose of saying that I cannot regard as an improvement of the
country a system which establishes a despot on every estate, which
degrades the tenant into a day-labourer, which--land being limited and
scarce--substitutes the old, barbarous, pastoral system for tillage,
which banishes the poor and enslaves the rich. Lord Digby levelled
cottages, gardens, farms, manured the land, got an enormous crop,
which in one year paid all the expenses; and then laid out the land in
vast tracts of pasture, for which he gets from 30 s. to 40 s. an acre.
That is improvement for _him_, but not for the people, not for the
country, not for the state, not for the Queen. It may crush Ribbonism.
But for every Ribbonman crushed, a hundred Fenians spring up; and
disaffection becomes not a mere local plague, but an endemic. Mr.
Trench gives a significant hint to other landlords to follow the
example of Lord Digby, assuring them that it will '_pay_.'

A still more flagrant case of lease-breaking occurred some years ago
in the county of Galway. Dr. Hancock has put the facts of this case
before the Government in his recent report:--

'The plaintiff was the Rev. Dr. O'Fay, parish priest of Craughwell, in
the county of Galway, and the defendant the landlord on whose estate
the priest resided. About ten years ago the priest was induced to
take a farm that had been held by a former parish priest; the previous
proprietor, the father of the defendant, promising a lease for three