In a financial point of view, therefore, it is manifestly the interest of the state to encourage ‘the spirit of tillage.’  It is thus that most will be got out of the ground, that most revenue will be raised, and that the other elements of national power will be most fully developed.  How can this encouragement be most effectually given?  Security for the farmer is essential—­of what nature should the security be?  The phrase ‘unexhausted improvements’ is often used.  But should the legislature contemplate, or make provision for the exhaustion of improvements?  Is the improving tenant to be told that his remedy is to retrograde—­to undo what he has done—­to take out of the land all the good he has put in it, and reduce it to the comparative sterility in which he, or those whom he represents, first received it?  Should not the policy of the legislature rather be to keep up improvements of the soil, and its productive power at the highest possible point, and make it the interest of the occupier never to relax in his exertions?  The rower will not put forth all his strength unless he believes he will win.  In other races, though many start, only one or two can receive the prize.  In this race of agricultural improvement all competitors might win ample rewards.  But will they put forth all their energies—­is it in human nature that they should—­was it ever done by any people, if the prizes are to be seized, enjoyed, and flaunted before their eyes by others, who may be strangers, and who never helped them by their sympathy in their toilsome course of training and self-denial?  It is because the landlords of the county Down have been so often in the same boat with their tenants, and with so much good faith, generous feeling, and cordial sympathy encouraged their exertions, and secured to them their just rewards, that this great county presents to the world such a splendid example of what industry, skill, and capital can accomplish.  Is it not possible to extend the same advantages through the whole island without wronging the landlord or degrading the tenant?

The stranger is at first surprised to see so large a town as Newtownards, with its handsome square, its town-hall, its wide, regular streets, its numerous places of worship, and a population of 9,500, in a place without visible factories, and without communication with the sea, within eight miles of Belfast, and three miles of Bangor, which, though a seaport, is but one-fourth of the size.  But although there are no great mills sending forth volumes of smoke, Newtownards is really a manufacturing town.  Those clean, regular streets, with their two-storey houses, uniform as a district in the east of London, are inhabited by weavers.  In each house there is one loom at least, in most two or three, and in some as many as six.  The manufacture of woollen and cotton goods of finer qualities than can be produced by the power-loom is carried on extensively.  I saw one man working at a piece