IRELAND. 349 



and 50,000 only above thirty acres. The law of succes- 

 sion favoured this division, by causing the partition of 

 the leases among the children, and this was not, as in 

 England, a dead letter. 



This combination of large property and small farming, 

 which in different parts of England and Scotland has 

 had such good effects, produced a consequence quite the 

 reverse in Ireland. Proprietors and cultivators seemed 

 determined upon ruining themselves by doing all in their 

 power to destroy the instrument of their common wealth 

 the soil. Instead of that salutary custom adopted by 

 the English proprietors of residing upon their properties, 

 the Irish landlords were always absent, and drew their 

 whole rents for expenditure elsewhere. They let their 

 lands when they could for long periods to English specu- 

 lators, who were represented by agents, called middlemen. 

 Improvident and spendthrift as all are who get money 

 without knowing how having, besides, only uncertain 

 and precarious incomes, because they neglected to make 

 seasonable advances these landlords mostly all lived 

 beyond their resources, consequently their debts in the 

 end increased to such an extent that the bulk of their 

 fortune was swept away. 



The middlemen in their turn, intent upon increasing 

 their profits without expending a shilling, having no inte- 

 rest, direct or personal, in the farming properly so called, 

 sub-let the land to an unlimited extent. The rural popu- 

 lation having multiplied to excess, numbering about 

 twenty-five to one hundred acres, whilst it is sixteen in 

 France, twelve in England, and five in the Lowlands of 

 Scotland, only too readily responded to the call, and the 

 consequence was an unrestrained competition among the 

 cultivators for possession of the land. As none of them 



