The Squanders of Castle Squander Author:William Carleton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER m. MASTER TOM—MY PUPILS—JEMMY M'SCUTT'S VERY ORIGINAL SOURCE OF INCOME. On finding myself by such a prosperous gale of good fortune a resident in ... more »the wealthy family of the Squanders, and in so respectable a capacity, I began to observe more closely the economy of the house and the individual character of its inmates. Of the Squire himself the reader has already had some intimation. He was one of those good-natured men whose good nature consists only in easiness of temper, and a strong habit of self-indulgence, without possessing scarcely a single practical virtue capable of making him a useful or respectable member of society. He was not then a harsh landlord, nor a man who would willingly harass or oppress his tenantry, but he was both negligent and ignorant of his duties as a landlord-proprietor. Indeed, so much so, that he was perfectly unconscious that " property had its duties as well as its rights." He simply imagined that his tenantry were bound to pay him his rents, and that it was his business only to receive them. But as to the various acts of justice, encouragement, instruction, or forbearance, and a hundred otherpoints involved in the duties of a landlord, he never once dreamt of them. These matters were altogether excluded from the habits and practice of the class to which he belonged, and in his ignorance and neglect of them he was in no degree singular. To look into the state and circumstances of his property, to observe modes of cultivation, to make himself acquainted with the habits and character of his tenantry, or the nature of the soil, never for a moment came within the spirit of his creed. The system by which he acted was that which predominated almost without exception among the landlords of Ireland. It is true he would have fought a duel for ...« less