In 1852 the local baker was driving a good business in good bread.

The tenant's wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin.
Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between savage squalor and civilisation.
Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began its operations.

He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by whom the management of it has been left to agents.

After Lord George's death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and sheep.
Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way.
Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the National League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings to accommodate an increasing population.

A flood which in August 1880 damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the people in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generous response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him from London alone.