STATE OF WARFARE. 375 



ment to settlers, recourse was had many centuries ago 

 to perpetual leases ; but the particular districts where 

 this system prevailed were not the most prosperous, 

 and yet the rent, or rather fine, reserved for the nominal 

 proprietor was quite insignificant. The tenant was the 

 real proprietor ; and one remarkable thing, inasmuch as it 

 shows the true point of the difficulty, is that these lands, 

 held in perpetual lease, had been divided and subdivided 

 at least as much as any others ; so that although the rent 

 was almost nominal, most of the cultivators had not 

 enough to live upon. Whole districts were divided into 

 farms of only three or four acres each, and it was seldom 

 that any above ten or twelve were to be met with. 



An unmitigated dispossession of the proprietors, 

 which the Irish more or less desired, would have been 

 but an imperfect remedy for the evil. Properties, like 

 farms, would have come to be divided, and after the first 

 generation they would have found themselves in the 

 same predicament as before. If large property should 

 have bounds, so should small. The danger from too small 

 properties is to be dreaded even more than from large. 



Above all, then, it is necessary that a limit should be 

 put upon this never-ending subdivision of farms, which 

 is fraught with impoverishment to the soil, the wretched- 

 ness of the cultivators, and trouble and annoyance to 

 proprietors. 



The English Government applied itself as earnestly 

 to encourage industrial and commercial enterprise, as it 

 formerly did to strangle them ; but time was an indispen- 

 sable element for developing this new and inexhaustible 

 source of employment, and that mass of unfortunate people 

 could not afford to wait. It was also thought that a means 

 for raising the rate of wages would be found in the estab- 

 lishment of a poor-rate for Ireland, but the number of 



