has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, though all my
warmth of feelings goes to my own oft-erring countrymen.

I returned to Ireland in 1843 with the intention of farming in Kerry on
the scientific system I had learned in Berwickshire. However, I found
the land so subdivided that it was not only difficult, but impossible,
to obtain a farm of sufficient size to return a reasonable percentage on
the necessary outlay. The population of Kerry was then 293,880, and the
land was divided into 25,848 farms, the holders of which, I may say,
entirely depended for existence on 26,030 acres of potatoes. To give an
example of the intense love of subdivision, I knew a case where one
horse was the property of three 'farmers,' and as they differed as to
who was to pay for the fourth shoe, they sold the horse, which was
bought by an uncle of mine.

Few farmers ate meat except at Christmas. They wore homespun flannel and
frieze, and their only luxury, whisky, was obtainable at a quarter of
its present price. A young couple were considered ready to start in
married life when they had obtained a 'farm,' consisting of a couple of
acres for potatoes and a mud hovel for themselves; and thus a
population, dependent on a precarious root, increased very rapidly. It
was thicker near the sea coast than inland. The rents then were about
double what they are now (though half what they had been at the
beginning of the nineteenth century), yet, with good potato crops,
people seemed content and times were fairly good. I should say there was
not such general drunkenness as in later times, and very little porter
was consumed in those days--at all events outside Dublin. What schools
there were were shockingly bad, and reading, not to say writing, was an
exceptional accomplishment, not only among the labouring classes, but
among those who held their heads much higher. This of course impressed