highest offers will be generally made by the poorest farmers or labourers. These generally would not have the means to cultivate more than a small patch of land, and they would not be a mark for the rent of even a middle-sized farm. In many cases the middleman held a farm in his own hands, and received a considerable part of the rent of the small holdings under him in labour, or in such agricultural produce as the cottier tenant could produce, and as his position as a farmer enabled him to consume or utilize. His account with his tenant would be something of this kind: on the one side would be the rent, the per contra would be two shillings and fourpence cash, forty days' labour, seven days' work of a horse and cart, a young pig, two geese, five pair of chickens, six dozen of eggs, and two loads of turf. The accounts, however, were never settled; receipts were neither given nor demanded; the tenant knew that he owed more than he could pay, and he had very little curiosity to know the exact amount. But the race of middlemen has now nearly died away, and subdivision from this cause rarely takes place.

A more fertile cause of subdivision of land is the custom which prevailed among farmers of dividing their farms among their children. In this manner, a farm belonging to a man with several children would be divided into five or six smaller farms; and these in their turn might be further subdivided in the following generation. The landlord found it impossible to stop this proceeding. There were no formal acts which he could notice; the children who were born on the land remained on it, and by mere verbal agreement each enjoyed some particular part instead of all enjoying the whole in common. Sometimes they remained for a time in the same house, and then the labour of a few days would erect a separate cabin, which might appear to be intended as a dwelling for a labourer, or as a pigsty, or as a residence for some offset of the family.

The chief causes of this custom were the absence of proper buildings on the land, and the ignorance and poverty of the farmers. The son who built a wretched

cabin was as well lodged as he had been in his father's house; he had never known anything better. As there were no farm buildings nor any capital on the chief farm, he did not want any for the plot assigned to him for his support. In fact, the want of capital and farmbuildings made a small farm more convenient and more. profitable than one of larger size. If the large farm had been supplied with a suitable dwelling-house and other buildings useful for the cultivation of the farm, it could not have been divided without inconvenience and probable loss.

Thus the condition of the country made this subdivision a matter of convenience; but the poverty and ignorance of the people made it a matter of necessity and justice. The farmer possessed nothing but his farm, and, therefore, could not provide for a child in any manner except by giving him a part of it. He and his children appeared not to know that any mode of livelihood was open to them except the cultivation of the particular farm on which they had hitherto lived. In many cases they could only speak Irish, which put successful emigration out of the question.

Those causes of subdivision of farms are gradually losing their force. Many farms are so well provided with suitable dwelling-houses and convenient offices, that they could not be subdivided without considerable loss. Tenants have more money, and are able to push forwards their children in various occupations. There are more sources of employment open to them, and their better education enables them to emigrate with success. The spread of education has been a great cause of the increase of emigration. A very small proportion of that increase has been caused by insecurity of tenure.

I do not believe that at present there is much tendency to an inconvenient subdivision of land in the greater part of Ireland; things may be safely left to find their own level, and under a system of freedom land will naturally fall into those parcels which will make it most productive and useful to the entire community. There are physical causes in the land itself which in some cases will produce small, and in others large farms.

D

CHAPTER V.

IT has been supposed by many that a beneficial change might be produced in the condition of Ireland by creating and keeping up a large body of peasant proprietors, that is to say, of men holding small farms in fee simple. I shall not enter into much discussion respecting the utility of such proprietors, because I believe it would be very difficult to create them, and impossible to keep them up in such a country as Ireland. Where they have long existed, they may continue for a little longer, and be sustained by habits and feelings traditionary in the families. But such habits and feelings cannot be created by any law, and they are inconsistent with the mental activity of Irishmen. They are inconsistent with railways, penny postage, a cheap newspaper press, and national education. Men will follow where their interests lead them, and in general it is not for a man's interest to be a peasant proprietor!

This may appear a paradox to some who would lay it down as incontrovertible truth that every peasant would desire to become a proprietor. I do not deny that, but I say that in general the proprietor would not wish to remain a peasant. Take, for example, the case of a man who is the owner in fee of thirty acres of land, worth thirty shillings an acre. The value of this, together with the capital necessary for its cultivation, and the furniture of his house, &c., cannot be less than fifteen hundred pounds, and it is not to be supposed that a man who has received a fair education, and has so much capital at his command, would consider his intellect and time and capital sufficiently employed in the cultivation

of five small fields. A farmer with the same capital and holding a hundred and fifty acres at a full rent would be much better off. He could live in greater comfort, give his children a better education, and leave them a larger provision at his decease. The small proprietor might improve his position by selling his land, and engaging in trade; or he might set his land, and enter into a profession, or some industrious calling with a salary, or he might emigrate and become the owner of five hundred acres of land instead of thirty, and have boundless prospects for his family instead of giving them the paltry provision of five or six acres each. In short, he can scarcely make a more unprofitable use of his estate than by occupying it himself as a peasant proprietor.

Of course, if you take a peasant of forty years of age, and make him suddenly a proprietor, although he may emigrate, he cannot readily betake himself to any other pursuit. But his sons will not remain on that farm. The latest agrarian crime that I saw mentioned in the newspapers was the murder of a man with a Celtic name. He was stated to have been the owner in fee of forty acres of land, which he set to four or five tenants, and went away to earn his bread elsewhere. He returned, having become entitled on his discharge from some public employment to a pension of about 147. a year. He took back some of the land from the tenants to reside on it himself, forgiving them a year and a half's rent in exchange. He was brutally murdered.

In the sales in the Landed Estates Court it may be observed as a matter of constant occurrence that a man with an estate that would be the size of a single small farm does not hold it all in his own hands, but sets the greater part of it to several small tenants, not keeping more in his own hands than is necessary for the supply of his house.

The possession of a small fee-simple estate can have little tendency to prevent emigration. The price would furnish the means of a prosperous emigration. The owner of an estate of forty acres in Ireland may become

the owner of several hundred acres in Australia or America.

In those countries where there are many very small hereditary estates, the inhabitants are ignorant, uuambitious, selfish, frugal, and laborious. The whole concerns of the family are centered in one care-how to preserve the patrimonial field. With this view, only one son may marry, and the occupations of all are settled beforehand with this one object. The peasant proprietor has the virtues which the Irish farmer wants, and the vices from which the Irishman is free.

I should not expect much advantage from the sudden. creation of peasant proprietors; but the law ought not to do anything to prevent their existence, as it now does by the law of primogeniture, the law of settlement, and every law that makes the transfer of land tedious, difficult, uncertain, or expensive.

The question of large and small farms is sometimes discussed as if it was intimately connected with the prosperity of Ireland. Some think that the country would be more prosperous if it was divided into large farms, held by men of capital, cultivating the land by means of well-paid labourers assisted by the most approved machinery. They wish to assimilate the agriculture of Ireland to the manufactures of England. Others are for the division into small farms, where the farmer would be his own labourer and overseer.

A great deal may be said on both sides; but the nature of the land itself generally determines whether the farms should be large or small. Rich plains, well fitted for pasture, will be held in large tracts. Uneven, rocky, rough, light, arable land, will generally be divided into small farms.

The grazier, who buys and sells and fattens cattle for the market, requires far more skill than the village farmer. He has far more opportunities of gaining money by skill, or of losing it by ignorance. Hence the unskilful grazier breaks, the skilful enlarges his territory. This he may safely do, as it is not necessary for him, as it is for the tillage farmer, to watch his labourers all day.