[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—In your summary of
news referring to Mr. Tuke's pam- phlet regarding Ireland, you quote from a letter appended to the second edition of the pamphlet, " These poor creatures [the ten- ants in Galway] have nothing out of which to make a subsist- ence, but the few acres of land brought into cultivation by them- selves from among the stones and rocks which abound every- where." Again, in your article, " Is Ireland Irreconcilable ?" you write :—" In England and Scotland the landed proprietors reside on their properties, and spend their incomes for the most part among their own people ;" and, " In England and Scotland, again, the improvements on the farm are made by the landlord." In regard to Scotland, and to the county in which I live, we could show the Yorkshire land-agent who pens the letter quoted from what perseverance can do amid stones and rocks. He has apparently seen nothing in farming but ploughing, sowing, and reaping. Imagine twenty or thirty acres of moor set aside to a tenant to reclaim. The soil is heath, over twelve inches of moss, and the moss lying over a close pavement of granite stones, some of them tons in weight. The hard-working tenant builds his own house and offices as he needs them, clears the whole land of the stones, which are used in fencing, and in a few years has, what is very common here, a small arable farm, or croft. I have seen fences of the stones taken from the land, six or eight feet broad. At the end of a four- teen or nineteen years' lease, the tenant has only a chance of renewing his lease, the farm very often being put in the market. If we only had a batch of Irishmen over here, we could read them a lesson on contentment.
Again, adverting to your own remarks about resident pro- prietors, you write in entire ignorance of the state of matters in Scotland. It is the exception, and not the rule, to find pro- prietors living on their estates. A gentleman's family may come down for a few months during the summer season, but you in the metropolis get the bulk of the laird's income spent with you. Further, you are in error about [the improvements to farms being done by the lairds. So many of our proprie- tors are poor, that the draining, fencing, and building are very, very often done by the tenants, and no consideration made for the expenditure. For reclamation of waste land, I could not give an instance of a tenant receiving compensa- tion. We in Scotland think the natives of the Emerald Isle favoured in soil and climate.-I am, Sir, &c., A NATIVE OF ABERDEENSHIRE.
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