Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/149

Rh subtle guise, rack-rents and the middleman are as rampant as they used to be in Connaught. Evidence of Chas. King O'Hara, Land Proprietor.

"In this district, long leases have proved injurious to the condition of the tenants and improvement of the land. The tenant having secured a long term, procrastinates, gets into lazy habits, neglects his business, alienates portions of his farm, to meet his rent or engagements, or provide for his family; goes on con-acring and impoverishing until his land is exhausted and himself a pauper, or his land is covered with paupers—himself the greatest. Four marked cases now present themselves on my property, in proof of the bad effect of long leases. First by the termination of a lease made in 1773, to one tenant, of eighty acres, at 9s per acre; the original tenant sold his interest to the present occupier, who is in the worse condition, and no improvement whatever is made; the land is con-acred to exhaustion, and three sub-tenants on it. I know this myself. The second is a farm, leased in the year 1772 to one tenant (by whose death it terminated), of seventy-eight acres, at 5s per acre. The tenant had only sixteen acres in his possession at his death, having sublet the remainder. I believe there about fifteen families on it. The third case is 368 acres, leased in 1784 to one tenant, of excellent land in the best condition at 10s. per acre for 256 acres of upland, with 112 acres of bottom and bog not charged for. The farm is now occupied by the four sons of the lessee, holding in common; they have no division, and all the buildings, walls, fences, and drains are decayed or destroyed, and land lying unfenced and exhausted, covered with weeds; and I will venture to say, that if now surveyed, I shall not be able to find the number of acres of upland that was leased to them. They have let some of the lower part go back to bog. The term of the original lease was for three lives. The fourth case is 208 acres, leased in the year 1784 to one tenant, at 5s per acre: the lessee apportioned it among his three sons; they among six; and it now has twenty-four families on it. Each of these farms should have made the fortune of the tenant, had he been possessed of common industry. I could state several similar