farm was let the landlord never dreamt of its being converted into tillage, and no provisions against subdivision were introduced. But as population multiplied the situation changed, and the enormous rise in the price of grain and provisions on the breaking out of the French war made it the interest of the tenant to subdivide his land as minutely as he could.[1] He accordingly introduced an Irish edition of what is known as 'la petite culture.'
It is true most of the later leases contained clauses against subletting, but an unexpected legal subtlety rendered them practically inoperative, and when attempts were made to stop an innovation, which in no way benefited the landlord, most proprietors found, after going to great
- ↑ "The introduction of the 40s franchise and its extension to the Catholic population also acted as an inducement both to the proprietors and to the middlemen to subdivide and to sublet. The war with France raised considerably the profits of the occupier, who was thus enabled to pay a large rent to the mesne lessee. These causes produced throughout the country a class of intermediate proprietors, known by the name of middlemen, whose decline after the cessation of the war, and the fall of prices in 1815, brought with it much of the evils we have witnessed of late years."—Ibid.
of their property for long terms, and thus avoided all immediate contact with the inferior occupiers, so that all the duties of a landlord were left for performance to a middleman. The latter, on the other hand, in the favourable position in which the laws had indirectly placed him as regarded the proprietor, dictated very frequently his own terms to the landlord; and restrictive covenants against subletting or subdividing were seldom inserted."—Digest Devon Commission, Summary, p. 1109.
