Page:Castle Rackrent and The Absentee - Edgeworth (1895).djvu/23

Rh which, notwithstanding Miss Edgeworth's objections, would have seemed so well fitted for its various requirements. The daughter's description of his life there, of his work among his tenants, of his paternal and spirited rule, is vivid and interesting. When the present owner of Edgeworthstown talked to us of his grandfather, one felt that, with all his eccentricities, he must have been a man of a far-seeing mind and observation. Mr. Erroles Edgeworth said that he was himself still reaping the benefit of his grandfather's admirable organisation and arrangements on the estate, and that when people all around met with endless difficulties and complications, he had scarcely known any. Would that there had been more Mr. Edgeworths in Ireland!

Whatever business he had to do, his daughter tells us, was done in the midst of his family. Maria copied his letters of business and helped him to receive his rents. "On most Irish estates," says Miss Edgeworth, "there is, or there was, a personage commonly called a driver,—a person who drives and impounds cattle for rent and arrears." The drivers are, alas! from time to time too necessary in collecting Irish rents. Mr. Edgeworth desired that none of his tenants should pay rent to any one but himself; thus taking away subordinate interference, he became individually acquainted with his tenantry. He also made himself acquainted with the different value of land on his estate. In every case where the tenant had improved the land his claim to preference over every new proposer was admitted. The mere plea, "I have been on your Honour's estate so many years," was disregarded. "Nor was it advantageous that each son," says Miss Edgeworth, "of the original tenant should live on his subdivided little potato garden without further exertion of mind or body." Further on she continues:

"Not being in want of ready money, my father was not