marriages.”--CAPTAIN MANN’S NARRATIVE. [60] First Board of Works Series of 1846-7, page 338 to 341. [61] The purposes to which these loans are applicable are as follows:-- 1. The drainage of lands by any means which may be approved by the Commissioners. 2. The subsoiling, trenching, or otherwise deepening and improving the soil of lands. 3. The irrigation or warping of lands. 4. The embankment of lands from the sea or tidal waters, or rivers. 5. The inclosing or fencing, or improving the fences, drains, streams, or water-courses of land. 6. The reclamation of waste or other land. 7. The making of farm roads. 8. The clearing land of rocks and stones. [62] By neglecting their estates, and omitting to construct proper farm buildings, and to make other necessary improvements, Irish landlords relinquish their position in rural society, and give free scope to the agrarian revolutionary plans which, under the disguise of “fixity of tenure” and “tenant right,” would dispossess the landlord, without conferring any permanent benefit on the tenant. In the smaller class of holdings, the entire gross produce is insufficient to support a family, without allowing for either rent, seed, or taxes; and even supposing that, with the dangerous help of the potato, eked out by harvest-work and begging, a rent is paid, the tendency to multiply and subdivide is so strong, that if the whole rent were given up, the holders would become in a generation or two much more numerous and equally poor. The fact is, that the main hope of extrication from the slough of despond in which the small holders in the centre and west of Ireland are at present sunk, is from the enterprise and capital and improved husbandry of the class of owners commonly known by the name of landlords. [63] In what follows we must be understood as giving expression to the practical conclusions of those who, having been charged with the unenviable task of superintending the measures of relief, and assisting to replace society on a permanent basis after it had been unsettled by this great calamity, must be allowed to have had unusual advantages for a close examination of the subject under a variety of aspects.