What have all these people to live on? And here I must assert that they have no appearance of suffering. The race is not remarkable for physical beauty. But though they are ragged and half naked, they do not look famished with hunger as the people do at Dublin. The children are very fat. We are now at the commencement of the hay season, but yet all the men seem idling about the cottages. The Colonel assures me that many of them have money deposited in the banks, and that it is not rare to see a man living like those whom I have visited give his daughters when they marry a dowry of 40_l._ or 50_l._ each. Where do they get all this money, besides the sums they spend? More than a shilling a day is never paid for a man’s labour. The mystery is explained to me by the information that in a few days they will all go to England to assist in the harvest and hop-picking, and they live in idleness through the rest of the year on the money then made. Formerly, part of it went to pay the rent; but those good times are quite past now.
I have already had one long discussion with the Colonel. He says that the land is good. I persist in considering it very indifferent as a rule; moreover, the climate is very bad. Vegetation is so backward that haymaking has scarcely commenced. They never secure more than one crop. The bad weather comes too soon for it to be possible to get any aftermath. I have not yet seen a field of wheat. When it was grown, the harvest was rarely successful. I had the curiosity to visit a large garden which has some reputation in the county, for the owner sells the produce of it. I am certain that it is fully three weeks behind Normandy, and even more behind the suburbs of Paris. In my garden in the Avenue Friedland, the rhododendrons have flowered a month ago. Here they are just opening. It is the 6th of July, yet there are scarcely any strawberries. The gardener proudly showed me a cherry-tree, which, thanks to an excellent situation, has already some ripe fruit! They are being sold at 1_s._ 6_d._ per pound to a dealer, who retails them at 2_s._ 1_d._!
How can agriculture prosper under such circumstances? Owing to the Gulf Stream, the winter is not severe; but how can the poor work in January and February? Yesterday we sat down to dinner at eight o’clock. We left it soon after nine, and it was broad daylight. The lamps were still unlighted. I therefore conclude that in six months it will be dark until nine o’clock in the morning, and we are in the South of Ireland. What must it be in the North? And what is a day’s labour worth if it only contains five or six working hours?