barrel, but not more, the dung being then the profit. The sows did exceedingly well, and the pigs also, in rearing.

The corn is brought to the mill from all the country round to the distance of 10 miles. The farmers send it in, and leave the price to be fixed. The raising the mill and offices complete cost £20,000, and has established, in fine corn country, a constant market; and has preserved the tillage of the neighbour. hood, which would have declined from the premium on distant carriage.

The flour is sent to Dublin, and the manufacturing country to the north about Newry, &c.

It employs constantly from 10 to 12 hands; the common ones, 6s. 6d. a week.

They sow much earlier, and the corn is drier of late years than at first.

The carriage of all the flour that is not sent by the navigation is by one-horse cars, which carry 6 cwt. of flour twice a week to Dublin.

The parish of Monknewton,' in the county of Meath lying between Drogheda and Slaine, nearly midway, formerly belonging to the rich abbey of Mellifont' (whose beautiful gothic ruins are in the neighbourhood), consists of very fine corn land, and mostly belongs to John Baker Holroyd, Esq., of Sheffield Place, in the county of Sussex: a gentleman who having favoured me before with excellent intelligence in that country, took pleasure in repeating it on occasion of my Irish tour.

Towards Mattock Bridge the soil is a light rich loam, but the north-western part is a strong fertile clay. The whole estate has been let out to two or three considerable people for 61 years, and they under-let in the usual style of the country. The leases expired in 1762, when Mr. H. visited the estate, and found it as ill used as it possibly could be. However, great rents were offered. He declined the proposals of several considerable men, to take the

'Apparently the parish referred to is Newtown Monasterboice, co.

Louth.

A Cistercian monastery, founded in 1142 as an offshoot of that at Clairvaux, where St. Bernard was the abbot. It grew to be an estab lishment of great wealth and importance, but was secularized in 1840, and became a ruin about a hundred years later.

whole to under-let at rack-rents as before, knowing that the same wretched husbandry and poverty must continue, if he did, although it would secure his rents most effectually. He was very well satisfied with the rents offered by persons who would reside on the estate, (dividing with them the profits of the middle-man), and voluntarily engaged to pay for the masonry and principal timber of farm houses, barns, stables, &c. He made large ditches, planting them with quick, round each farm. He allowed half the expence of inner fences. He provided an excellent lime-stone quarry in the neighbourhood, besides lime-kilns on different farms. He built about the centre of the estate a very large double kiln, calculated to burn 1,000 barrels per week. He allows 30s. for every acre on which 100 barrels of unslacked lime shall be laid, within a certain number of years, and on condition that the land hath a winter and summer fallow at the same time. In some instances he allows 40s. per acre, which is nearly the whole expence of liming; and in some instances, when £100 is laid out on an house, he allows £50 or £60, but as yet no great advantage is taken of his encouragement to build. He endeavoured to prevent the scattered style of building; to have the barns, stables, &c., built round a farm yard, and that the house should have a story or floor above. Some objected, that a floor raised an house too high, and exposed it too much: the estate is rather low as to situation, and sheltered by hills on every side, but I understand some considerable houses are to be built next year. The common farmers, however, prefer living on the ground, surrounded by mud walls, have no idea of the chearfulness of large windows, but let in barely light enough to do their business through apertures not much better than loop holes; neither has the encouragement to lime been taken advantage of in the degree it might be expected. Mr. H. is an hearty well-wisher to Ireland, and ready to embrace any scheme of improvement for its advantage. He wished to make some return to the Country for spending the income of the estate out of it. He was ready to allow almost the whole of every expense that could be laid out on the lands, knowing the poverty of the common Irish residing tenantry, and their characters

to be such, that they could not improve them as they should be; yet I understand they are not much better satisfied than other tenants: and the rent seems high. The farms were mostly let at a time when the spirit of taking land was greater than at present, but it is far from an high rent for land so circumstanced and situated, built and improved at the expense of the landlord. There is much in the neighbourhood, especially towards Drogheda, let at two guineas, and three pounds and upwards, per acre. He is a great friend to agriculture, has considered the subject much, and was very anxious to introduce something like the best English husbandry on his Irish estate, but that is still at a great distance. He endea voured to break through the barbarous custom of having the whole farm laid waste at the end of a lease, and every inch ploughed up, but could not carry his point further, than by giving great present advantages to the tenants, to induce them to agree, that the third part of the farms should not be ploughed the last four or five years of the lease. The soil is so good, that if used ever so ill in that time, it will recover, and there will be a very good sward. According to the common method of leasing lands in many parts of Ireland, the country is nearly waste and unprofit able, to the great prejudice of the public, during seven or eight years in every 31 years, the usual lease. For the tenant, not restrained by proper clauses, nor obliged to any particular management, or to manure, ploughs up every thing, and for some time before the expiration of his term, pursues the most ruinous system for the land, disposed even to lose some advantage himself, rather than his successor should have any benefit; consequently, the three or four last years the crops hardly pay expences, and three or four years more are lost before it can be brought into any condition. Good and straight roads are made through and across the estate, and bridges built where necessary. Such a disposition in the landlord to improve, must do much for the country.

Notwithstanding the attention that has been paid to the estate, the young whitethorn hedges, (of which a great quantity had been planted, and which grew most luxu riantly) serve as spring food for sheep and other cattle.

The estate is now divided into farms, from 70 to 150 acres, and let in general for 31 years, at 408. and 358. per acre, some part at 30s. and a small part at 268. The lands are tythe-free, and there are no taxes of any kind paid by the tenants, except assessments for making and repairing the roads of the barony, which some years have amounted to 10d. per acre, and is laid on by the grand jury at the

assizes.

CHAPTER III.

Mr. Gerard at Gibbs Town.-Lord Bective at Headfort.-Lord Longford at Packenham Hall.-The Penal Laws.-Condition of the Lower Classes.-Pilfering common.—Mullingar.-Tullamore.-Capt. Johnston at Charleville.

ULY 1st, left Slaine, taking the road towards Kells.'

the most considerable farms in the country. He very kindly shewed me it, and explained the management.

His bullocks he buys in October at £10 each, and sells them in summer with £4 profit: the cows in May, at £5 10s. and sells them before winter from 30s. to 40s. profit. He mows 100 acres of hay for the sheep and bullocks, and keeps good after-grass besides. The bullocks in winter have nothing but hay and grass, and are always in the fields, there being no such thing in this country as foddering yards for winter feeding. Two bullocks require three acres. The fields being generally large, a proportion of stock is thrown to each, which are left to fat; but if any do not seem to thrive well, they are drawn from them and put into better food.

The sheep Mr. Gerard buys in October, three year old wethers, at 258.; he begins to sell in April, and by August they are generally gone at about 358. on an average. Fatting, in this manner he thinks more advantageous than ewes and lambs. The winter sheep have hay in bad weather.

The best cattle come from Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon. Mr. Gerard thinks the cross of the English breeds in Ireland has done good, except in the hides, which are much thinner from them. A good hide is worth £3 or £4, but in common from 30s. to 40s.

The soil of this neighbourhood is, much of it, a dry stoney loam, which wants no draining; and whenever red clover is sown and left, the white comes in perfect sheets, but the bottoms are strong land, wet and bad. All the dry lands would do perfectly well for turneps; Mr. Gerard tried them, and got fine crops: but the poor stole them in car loads, which made him leave off the practice.

Under the boggy bottoms there is a very fine white marle, of a sort I have not seen in England; it is under four feet of black bog, and lies in a stratum, 14 feet thick, on blue gravel; it is always found under the black, not the red bog; it cuts with turf spades, quite like white butter, but in the air falls into a sandy powder to appearance: it is uncommonly light in the hand, and has a very great effervescence with acids, as I tried. Mr. G. has marled 109 acres, and found the benefit immense. Lays 2 or 300 barrels an acre, and always on tillage.

He has made many covered drains with stones, the effect of which is great; and he has his fields fenced in the most perfect manner by deep ditches, high banks, and well-planted hedges. One-third of the county of Meath, he thinks, is let to subtenants; a farm of 1100 acres near him is so, and does not produce a tythe of what it ought to do. For stocking, etc., a grazing farm of 1,000 acres, £2,000 does; £3,000 would do it well. Corn-acres are common here, which is to let the land for £3 158, to £4 an acre to the poor for three or four crops; who generally sow oats, but sometimes wheat.

Reached Lord Bective's in the evening, through a very fine country, particularly that part of it from which is a prospect of his extensive woods. No person could with more readiness give me every sort of information than his lordship.

The improvements at Headfort' must be astonishing to those who knew the place seventeen years ago; for then

About a mile from Kells, co. Meath.

L