126 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK II. 



planked nor bricked, and receives no preparation ; it is 

 lower than the level of the ground, and so full of inequali- 

 ties that the water stands in little pools. 



The Commissioners visited these cabins in August, after 

 two months of excessive heat, and did not find a single 

 one with the floor dry. They observed many which beg- 

 gars and persons ejected from their holdings had con- 

 structed in the ditches, in order to avoid paying anything 

 for the ground they occupied ; for the landowners let at 

 an extremely dear rate. 



The witnesses say that, when the landlords build the 

 cabins, they cost them 5/., and they let them for I/. 165. 

 a year. In general they erect them on their worst land, 

 chiefly on bog-land, because the tenant quickly sets to 

 work to bring into cultivation a piece of land, for which, 

 at the end of three years, the landlord makes him pay 

 rent. When he is unable to do this, all that he possesses 

 is seized his cow or his pig. 



The cost attending seizures is of small account, and the 

 poor are forced to pay this in labour ; in the barony of 

 Middlethird, the witnesses say, that when a landlord in- 

 tends to seize the potatoe-crop of a labourer, he plants a 

 cross on the spot, and there is no instance of the unfor- 

 tunate man touching the crop. 



Generally speaking, said an old man, for the last fifty 

 years the dwellings have become worse and worse, and 

 if there have been any instances to the contrary, they 

 have been in the towns. 



The Commissioners, in addition to all these depositions, 

 say that there is not one of these cabins which would be 

 considered habitable in England ; that the Irish live in a 



