Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be
forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the
practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree
from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in
England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against
the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long
leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of
security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence
on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small
patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying
an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand
for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has
produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has
produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the
hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital,
to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the
labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land
as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this
security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one,
as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.
While we are on this subject, we may draw the reader's attention
to a very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman, on Irish matters,
which, though we believe it has never been published, has had
an extensive private circulation. We allude to "An Address to
the Members of the House, of Commons on the Landlord and Tenant
Question, by Warren H. R. Jackson, Esq." The work, though somewhat
tinged with the hard politico-economical school, is written with
great shrewdness of thought and freedom from prejudice, and is well
worthy the careful attention of the honourable House. The writer, in
discussing the vexed question he has taken in hand, fully coincides
with the general principles laid down by Mr M'Culloch. "This," he
says, (speaking of the subdivision of land) "is one of the monster
grievances of Ireland, and you will do little good unless you abate
it." This abatement he would bring about mainly by prospective
laws, as by placing all contracts for subletting _hors la loi_, and
so taking away from the first lessee all power of recovering his
rent from the actual tenant. We cannot but think that this would be
found a most salutary enactment. It should be remembered, that the
occupier is responsible to the owner of the freehold by the power
of distress vested in the latter, and it is but just that he should
be relieved from the liability to pay two rents--a liability which
it is manifest no good farmer would incur, but which the squalid
ravager of the soil in Ireland is always eager for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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