This state of things was certainly largely miti-
gated by custom and the good feeling of landlords,
but as a system of tenure it was essentially bad ; in
truth, a tenant right of enormous value had been
created, yet was not law-worthy, and could be de-
stroyed or diminished on an immense scale. This
was a cause of unrest, complaint, and trouble, and
occasionally of the agrarian crimes which had never
wholly disappeared in the south, and recently, I have
said, had revived, and a considerable reform was
beyond dispute needed. Proceeding to the landlord
class, it had not been much changed of late, but
the changes in it had hardly been for the better.
The old resident gentry were, for the most part,
popular, and managed their estates, in the main,
fairly. But absenteeism had perhaps increased, and
if absentee landlords were sometimes excellent, they
often neglected or disregarded the duties of property.
The landlords who had purchased in the Encumbered
Estates Court were generally condemned as exacting
men, and by this time, it must be borne in mind,
they were the owners of several millions of acres,
and their bad influence was widely felt. In addition,
the broad division of race and faith which separated
the owner from the occupier of the soil remained what
it had always been, with the far-reaching evil effects ;



228 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS OF A LIFE

and the ever growing bureaucratic rule of the Castle
had more and more diminished the power of land-
lords, and made them less fitted to lead the com-
munity. The landlords of the South had become
more and more a caste cut off from the people and
without authority, more and more like the old French
seigneurs, to whom I have already compared them.
