374 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



it was really, in fact, only another name for dispossession. 

 M. de Eaumer and M. de Sismondi have both extolled this 

 forced system, which has found a good many partisans 

 even in England. Here again it may be said that Irish 

 property in general deserved little consideration, both on 

 account of its origin and the use that had been made of 

 it ; but, after all, it was property that is to say, the 

 most solid basis of society. The name, at all events, 

 commanded respect ; and in every case there are always 

 numerous exceptions, which it would not be right to 

 include in a general condemnation. 



There was nothing to prove, moreover, that this remedy 

 would be efficacious. It was countenancing absenteeism, 

 one of Ireland's greatest curses ; and more than ever 

 doing away with the connection between rent and farm- 

 ing. Supposing that the measure had, for the moment, 

 good effects, it was creating for the future a position full 

 of embarrassment and difficulty. In France, perpetual- 

 lease rents were very common under the old regime ; but 

 they entailed such a complication of interests, that it was 

 judged necessary to do away with them, or at least to make 

 them essentially redeemable. The power of repurchase 

 would have been but an insufficient remedy in Ireland. 

 Besides, according to the manner in which it works in a 

 country in a state of revolution, it would only in most 

 cases have completed the expropriation. It may answer 

 when perpetual-lease rents are the exception ; but when 

 this is the universal condition of property, it could have 

 only an imperceptible effect; and properties which are 

 not free, remain a long time the rule. 



Ulster being constantly quoted as a favourable ex- 

 ample of fixed tenure as well as tenant-right, proves no 

 more in the one case than in the other. It is true that 

 in some parts of this province, and by way of encourage- 



