Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/238

In the south and west, matters are, I fear, very different; but even there great diversity of sentiment exists; the aspirations of the peasantry being apt to take a local colouring, varying with the influences which have been brought to bear upon them,—differing on different estates and in different counties, in some districts their utmost pretensions being most reasonable, while in others they are such as no legislation could satisfy; nor, unhappily, does it always follow that those tenants are the most contented who are treated with the greatest indulgence. But, though embodied in a hundred different modes of expression, the disquietude of the Irish occupier may be referred to three distinct conditions of thought:—First, a fear of any change in his position acting on a mind possessed with a blind, unreasoning hankering after a bit of land; the traditional failing of a people to whom for centuries land has been the only means of support, and which leaves them the moment they are surrounded by other associations. Secondly, a vague jealousy springing from his incapacity to understand the laws which regulate investments of capital in civilized countries, which makes the tenant grudge any expenditure on his farm that will be of ulterior benefit to his landlord, though it might in the meantime repay himself, capital and interest, twenty-fold. And thirdly, the legitimate anxiety of a thoughtful man, whose prospects are kept in perpetual hazard by his landlord's unwillingness or inability to grant an appropriate lease. Of these