At the beginning of the present century the small farmers were generally weavers.  There was an obvious incompatibility in the two occupations, and the farms were neglected.  Gradually this evil has been corrected, especially since the famine.  The weavers have become cottiers, and the farmers have devoted themselves to their agricultural operations exclusively with the more energy since railroads have so facilitated the quick sale of produce, particularly that sort of produce which enables the occupiers to supply the markets with the smaller necessaries of life, and with which large farmers would not trouble themselves.  Daily labourers working from 6 A.M., to 6 P.M. in large fields with machinery cannot do the hundreds of little matters which the family of the small holder attends to every hour of the day, often in the night—­and which give work to women and children as well as the men—­work of the most healthful character and most free from demoralizing influences.

On a farm of fifteen to thirty acres there is constant employment of a profitable kind for the members of a household, including women and children.  The effect of good drainage is that farming operations can be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are high.  Oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the hay-making, and all the harvest operations.  It is by the ceaseless activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs, &c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, and that towns grow up and prosper.  If Down and Antrim had been divided into farms of thousands of acres each, like Lincolnshire, what would Belfast have become?  Little more than a port for the shipping of live stock to Liverpool and Glasgow.  Before the famine, the food of the small farmers was generally potatoes and milk three times a day, with a bit of meat occasionally.  But salt herrings were the main reliance for giving a flavour to the potato, often ‘wet’ and bad.  After the failure of the potatoes, their place was supplied by oatmeal in the form of ‘stirabout.’  Indian meal was subsequently found cheaper and more wholesome.  But of late years the diet of the farmers in these parts has undergone a complete revolution.  There is such brisk demand for butter, eggs, potatoes, and other things that used to be consumed by the family, that they have got into the habit of taking tea, with cakes and other home-made bread twice, or even three times, a day.  The demand for tea is, therefore, enormous.  There is one grocer’s establishment in Belfast which has been able to produce a mixture that suits the taste of the people, and the quantity of tea sold by it is a ton a day.  This is the business of but one out of many houses in Belfast.  Then there is the brisk trade in such towns as Newtownards, Lisburn, Ballymena, &c.  In pastoral districts the towns languish, the people pine in poverty, and the workhouses are in request.