Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/247

Rh be made to realize is, that an independent labourer is a more respectable personage than a struggling farmer, and a prosperous husbandman than a rack-renting squireen. A very acute observer, the agent of an estate in the North of Ireland, though himself a native of the South, thus signalizes the dangers which are already becoming apparent from the minute division of property now promoted by sales in the Encumbered Estates Court.

"I have several times mentioned to you the evils likely to arise from the sales in the Landed Estates Courts. Under the original Encumbered Estates Court, properties were brought to sale in large lots, suitable only for the purses of moneyed men, and accordingly they were purchased at such a price as enabled the buyer to let the lands at fair rents to the tenants. After a time the demand for land in small lots became so great, owing to many of the farming class returning with money from the gold diggings, &c. &c, that persons having the carriage of sales, at once decided on making the 'lots to suit purchasers,' and in almost every instance the landlord class of gentry were, and still are, beaten out of the market. The large prices given by the class I have mentioned, being such as to reduce the interest on the outlay in several instances which I could mention below two per cent . . . . The buyer is not of the standing in life to care for the comforts of those under him; his income is small—much smaller owing to the high price he gave for the lot. . . . The reason I mention middle men is that I see daily a class of men becoming landlords, in consequence of the sale of small lots in the Landed Estates Court, who are in every respect similar to those men." Professor Cairnes has made the same observation. "There is, however, a partial counter-current, of which I have not seen any public notice. A class of men, not very numerous, but sufficiently so to do much mischief, have, through the Landed Estates Court, got into possession of land in Ireland, It is true, were Mr. Bright's