with the people cannot be over estimated, especially in Ireland, where a kind word from a superior goes a great way.[314] An agent manages the property of an absentee.  There are many such agents who are just and considerate, but the traditional character of an Irish land agent, resulting from long experience, is, that he is a haughty oppressive man, who has other interests to serve besides those of his employer; and who makes his employer’s interests subservient to his own.  Whether he thinks it a duty he owes his master, or that he believes it gives himself importance, an Irish land agent is frequently in the habit of acting in a proud, browbeating manner towards the tenants under him.  I have seen a most respectable body of tenants, with their rent in their hands, stand with cowed and timid looks in the agent’s office; they kept at as great a distance from him as space would allow; they were afraid to tender the rent, and yet they feared to hang back too long, as either course might bring down the ire of the great man upon them.  His looks, his gestures, the few words he condescended to utter—­even his manner of counting bank notes, which he thumped and turned over with a sort of insolent contempt,—­all went to prove that those fears were not ill-founded.  The scene forcibly reminded me of a group of children in the Zoological gardens, before the cage of one of the fiercer animals; they view him with awe, and, on account of his size and spots, with a certain admiration, but they are afraid of their lives to approach him.  It is usual for a resident landlord to have an agent too, but he is subject to the personal observation, and under the immediate control of the landlord, who can be easily appealed to, if a misunderstanding should arise between him and any tenant.  It is always a great satisfaction to the weaker party to have an opportunity of going, as they say, to the “fountain-head.”  It is bringing one’s case before a higher tribunal when one feels he has not got justice in the court below. 3.  Whether it is or is not the fact, that the landlord by living at home and spending his fortune amongst his people adds to the aggregate wealth of the nation, it is certain that his doing so is a partial and immediate good to the locality in which he resides.  Often does the Irish peasant point to the decayed village, and the crumbling mansion, as evidences that the owner of the soil is an Absentee. 4.  There is a special reason given by at least one English writer, why Irish landlords ought to be resident, and thus endeavour to gain the confidence of their tenants; and that is, because nine-tenths of the Irish estates have been confiscated from the native owners, and are held by men who differ from their tenants in country and religion; and their non-residence, and consequent want of sympathy with the people, perpetuates in the minds of those people the bitter traditions of rapine and conquest; so that, instead of feeling they are the tenants of kind, considerate landlords, they are apt to regard themselves, in some sort, as the despised slaves of conquerors, who, if they do not still look upon them as “Irish enemies,” do not certainly entertain for them the feelings which ought to find a place in the breasts of landlords who look upon their tenants as something more than mere rent producers.