Note 62 — Front matter (continued 2)

By neglecting their estates, and omitting to construct proper farm buildings, and to make other necessary improvements, Irish landlords relinquish their position in rural society, and give free scope to the agrarian revolutionary plans which, under the disguise of “fixity of tenure” and “tenant right,” would dispossess the landlord, without conferring any permanent benefit on the tenant. In the smaller class of holdings, the entire gross produce is insufficient to support a family, without allowing for either rent, seed, or taxes; and even supposing that, with the dangerous help of the potato, eked out by harvest-work and begging, a rent is paid, the tendency to multiply and subdivide is so strong, that if the whole rent were given up, the holders would become in a generation or two much more numerous and equally poor. The fact is, that the main hope of extrication from the slough of despond in which the small holders in the centre and west of Ireland are at present sunk, is from the enterprise and capital and improved husbandry of the class of owners commonly known by the name of landlords.