“One great reason given by the people themselves for leaving the Kingdom is the poverty to which that part of the country is reduced, occasioned in a great measure, they say, by raising of rents in many places above the real value of land, or what can be paid out of the produce of them, if any tolerable subsistence be allowed to the farmers using their utmost industry.” Complaint was also made of the uncertain tenures, the short leases, and “the usual method of late when lands are out of lease,” which was “to invite and encourage all persons to make proposals and set them to the highest bidder without regard to the tenants in possession.” Relation of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland prior to 1860. The relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland was, down to the year 1860, based on tenure, not on contract. The old feudal tenures imported from England were, during the last two or three centuries, modified and altered by the existing Irish customs. The result was that a period of much doubt and confusion arose, and an extraordinary collection of Acts dealing with land was placed on the Irish Statute Book. In the reign of George III. upwards of sixty of these Acts were passed for Ireland, while six sufficed for England. The following reigns were equally productive in agrarian legislation, and the condition of the occupiers became more and more unsettled and unsatisfactory, and “wild doctrines,” to quote the words of the eminent authors of a standard work on Irish Land Tenure, published in 1851, were agitated, including “extravagant demands for fixity of tenure and compulsory valuation of rents.” The relation of landlord and tenant, based on tenure that prevailed down to the year 1860, gave no security of occupation to the tenant, and did not protect his improvements, but the cost of ejectment and the legal difficulties of proof that accompanied it exercised a powerful restraining influence in preventing capricious eviction. Position of Tenants under the Common Law as regards Eviction—in the case of Leaseholds. During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, while many Irish tenants held under leases or written contracts the great majority were tenants from year to year. Under the Common Law both in England and Ireland, the right of the landlord to recover possession of the land in the case of a lease or written contract depended on the covenants and conditions in the contract, and no ejectment could take place unless for “a condition broken.” In the Case of Yearly Tenancies.