Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/149

 then the former roguish sort, which you reckoned, yet the fault (me thinkes) is no lesse worthy of a Marshall.

Iren. That were a harder course, Eudoxus, to redresse every abuse by a Marshall: it would seeme to you very evill surgery to cut off every unsound or sicke part of the body, which, being by other due meanes recovered, might afterwards doe very good service to the body againe, and haply helpe to save the whole: Therefore I thinke better that some good salve for the redresse of the evill bee sought forth, then the least part suffered to perish: but hereof wee have to speake in another place. Now we will proceede to other like defects, amongst which there is one generall inconvenience, which raigneth almost throughout all Ireland: that is, the Lords of land and Free-holders, doe not there use to set out their land in farme, or for tearme of yeares, to their tennants, but onely from yeare to yeare, and some during pleasure, neither indeede will the Irish tennant or husbandman otherwise take his land, then so long as he list himselfe. The reason hereof in the tennant is, for that the land -lords there use most shamefully to racke their tennants, laying upon them coigny and livery at pleasure, and exacting of them (besides his covenants) what he pleaseth. So that the poore husbandman either dare not binde himselfe to him for longer tearme, or thinketh, by his continuall liberty of change, to keepe his land-lord the rather in awe