Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/226

Rh consider the English system of large farms applicable to Ireland ;* on the contrary, 1 believe we shall eventually settle down to an average size of farm, as exceptionally suitable as is the guagc of our railways; but if a landlord wishes to furnish his estate with farm buildings of his own erection,")" and to better the position of his industrious tenants, by rendering the size of their farms proportionate to


 * " There is, we are sorry to say, a growing disposition in (English) Land Agents to abolish small farms altogether. The sizes that farms ought to be, however, are not to be arbitrarily determined. The whole question depends on circumstances, comprehending the qualifications of tenantry, the nature of the soil and climate, also the best system of farming which ia possible in the circumstances. Not only are small farms profitable in a national point of view, but they serve as steps in the ladder by which men of small means and industrious habits may raise themselves in the social scale ; and such men succeed wonderfully by dint of hard labour and rigid economy." — Macdonald's Estate Management, p. 251.

" With this constant and irresistible tendency to subdivide land, it often happens that the landlord, at the expiration of a lease, finds thirty or forty tenants, and as many mud cabins, instead of the one tenant to whom the farm was originally let. What is a landlord under these circumstances to do ? Either he must surrender to the evil, which will inevitably go on increasing ; or he must set about clearing his estate, in order to consolidate the holdings."

" If an Irish landlord wishes to improve his property, he finds that he cannot venture to lay out capital upon it, without increasing the size of the holdings. He cannot erect farm-buildings on plots of a few acres; the construction and repair of farm-buildings by the landlord implies the existence of large farms, and a respectable tenantry. A landlord has no hold on a cottier tenantry : they are not responsible persons, nor can they be trusted with valuable property."— -Sir G. C. Lewis on Irish Disturbances, p. 320.