IRELAND. 357 



small rent of 5s. per acre, or that famine in all its horrors 

 should, as it were, have taken up its abode there 1 



Among the expedients set on foot for making as much 

 out of the land as was possible without capital, two ap- 

 parently offered great advantages to the landlord, but 

 were ultimately found to be as ruinous for him as for the 

 tenant : these were, partnership-tenure, and the con-acre 

 system. 



Partnership-tenure or, as it was also called, rundale 

 or ?*unrig, a word apparently of Scandinavian origin 

 consisted in letting a piece of land of a given extent (for 

 example, one hundred, two hundred, or five hundred 

 acres) to a village, the inhabitants of which constituted 

 the partners in the concern. That portion which they 

 could not cultivate was common to all, the remainder 

 being divided annually among the different families ; 

 and each of these lots might again be divided among the 

 several members of a family, if they thought right to do 

 so. After the crop was gathered, the whole land was 

 again common property, and a new partition was made 

 for the following year. In the most backward districts 

 of France we have a good many villages somewhat upon 

 the same principle, only with this difference, that, in place 

 of farming the property, the community owns it : but, 

 notwithstanding this advantage, the right in common 

 everywhere produces similar results namely, the im- 

 poverishment both of the land and of the people who 

 cultivate it ; and this poverty becomes greater and greater 

 as the population increases. We have seen a hundred 

 acres let in this way to one hundred co-tenants, who 

 lived in the greatest misery, and never succeeded in 

 paying any rent. This system was to be found most 

 prevalent in the least fertile districts, and such villages 

 as adopted it possessed scarcely any cattle, while the 



