he discharged were so various, manifold, and conflicting; the measures
he took with the people, whose destinies were committed to him, were
so thoroughly devised, by reference to the peculiar condition of each
man--what he could do, or bear, or submit to--and not by any sense of
justice; that a sort of government grew up over the property full of
hitches, contingencies, and compensations, of which none but the inventor
of the machinery could possibly pretend to the direction. The estate being,
to use his own words, 'so like the old coach-harness, so full of knots,
splices, and entanglements, there was not another man in Ireland could make
it work, and if another were to try it, it would all come to pieces in his
hands.'

Kate was shrewd enough to see this; and in the same way that she had
admiringly watched Peter as he knotted a trace here and supplemented a
strap there, strengthening a weak point, and providing for casualties even
the least likely, she saw him dealing with the tenantry on the property;
and in the same spirit that he made allowance for sickness here and
misfortune there, he would be as prompt to screw up a lagging tenant to
the last penny, and secure the landlord in the share of any season of
prosperity.

Had the Government Commissioner, sent to report on the state of
land-tenure in Ireland, confined himself to a visit to the estate of Lord
Kilgobbin--for so we like to call him--it is just possible that the Cabinet
would have found the task of legislation even more difficult than they have
already admitted it to be.

First of all, not a tenant on the estate had any certain knowledge of how
much land he held. There had been no survey of the property for years. 'It
will be made up to you,' was Gill's phrase about everything. 'What matters