This arrangement was not conducive to the general 

 prosperity of the people. It did not afford facilities for the 

 acquisition of individual property, nor security for its per- 

 manent enjoyment. 



About the commencement of the seventeenth century, the 

 crown of England having obtained possession of large ter- 

 ritories in various parts of Ireland, reconveyed it in small 

 estates, and with a title in fee to undertakers, pledged to 

 improvement, and with stipulations favourable to the farm- 

 ing population, who were relieved from the variable and 

 uncertain impositions of military tenure, and permitted to 

 hold land by lease at a fixed rent of moderate amount. 



The rents thus paid by the farmers, (who from this period 

 were no longer vassals, but tenants, not dependent for pro- 

 tection on the military strength of a chief, but on the 

 power of British law,) were originally much less to the 

 landlord than their descendants at present are obliged to 

 pay to government in taxes. 



The yeomanry of the country were now enabled to 

 acquire property. They enclosed farms, built houses, mul- 

 tiplied cattle, and raised from the hitherto unbroken glebe 

 large crops of enriching grain, which they were able to 

 dispose of for money, capable of being exchanged for 

 luxuries to which they had heretofore been strangers. 



The improvements which were thus made, the preva- 

 lence of peace, and the increase of an industrious popula- 

 tion, rendered land more valuable, and the proprietors 

 availed themselves of every opportunity to increase the 

 small amount of rent originally paid to themselves out of 

 their estates. 



Thus, by degrees, the relation of landlord and tenant, 

 as it now prevails in Ireland, came to be established ; and 

 the unsatisfactory condition in which they stand to each 

 other results from a prevalent desire, on the part of 

 many proprietors, to retain in the dependence of the old 

 semi-abolished military tenure those tenants who should 

 be only bound by civil contract, and whose equitable claii 

 should be legally recognised. 



