How minute the subdivision has been may be gathered from the fact that 335 English acres, whereof some 250 are good for anything in their present condition, are divided among 40 tenant families, whose numbers may be safely put down at 200 souls. The land is therefore divided at the rate of one and a quarter English acres per head, and when it is mentioned that the most important tenant pays a rent of 17l. 10s., it will be seen that some of the holdings are ridiculously small. Many range from 4l. to 5l. per annum and are absolutely incapable of providing food for a family. It has been found impossible to reduce the number of tenants to any sensible degree without incurring the hatred of the country side, and the old and infirm whose children are dead or have emigrated, still cling to the miserable cabins in which their lives have been passed.
On the opposite side of Tralee I witnessed a spectacle of a widely different character. A smart drive from Tralee northwards through a blinding rain landed me at Ardfert, the village in the centre of Mr. W. Crosbie's wonderfully improved estate. Going about his work quietly and unostentatiously, the proprietor has, in the course of forty-two years, completely altered the conditions of existence on his land. When it came into his possession in 1838, it was, as many Irish estates are now, suffering from local congestion of population. Mr. Crosbie's father had inherited from the Earl of Glendore, who had given leases under the old penal laws. At the time only Protestants were allowed to hold leases, and in consequence of the small number of Protestants compared with the demand for lessees, the leases were obtained upon very advantageous terms--a long period, a low rent, and few conditions. The result was that the penal law, like other clumsy devices of the kind, defeated itself; for there was nothing to prevent the lessee from subletting the land. This had been done to an enormous extent when Mr. Crosbie came into possession, and the lowland part of the estate was greatly over-populated. The upper part was greatly under-populated, and in the words of the proprietor, nothing could be worse than the way in which the tenants held the land. "No one knew from year to year which farm he had to till, and they used to divide every field and divide the crops every year." Mr. Crosbie was not deterred by the difficulty of the task before him, and undertook the redistribution of his tenantry, on the anti-rundale system, and by degrees succeeded in planting the surplus population of the lowlands upon the higher ground. Moreover he anticipated the ideas of Mr. Mitchell Henry and Canon Griffin by putting his tenants under the direct control of a skilled agriculturist, under his own supervision. Having thus redistributed his people on the land and taught them the elements of agricultural science, he commenced the work of building them suitable houses and farm buildings.