an alternative which rule the rate of both; if the unhappy condition of the Irish cottier tenant of former days may be referred to the one, the physical and mental degradation of the labouring classes in the Black Country, as revealed in the report of a late Commission, is even a more startling illustration of the other.
In fact the middlemen of Ireland were rather the exponents than the cause of the people's misery, and, though piled ten deep one above the other, on a single tenancy, they no more occasioned rack rents than the degrees on a barometer occasion the atmospheric pressure they record. Derivative tenancies, cottier allotments, potato cultivation, low wages, emigration have been the rude alleviations—not the origin—of the country's destitution; just as half-rations are the alternative for short provisions,—or any wages are preferable to starvation—a patch of ground, at a rack rent, to serfdom
Hon. W. Le Poer Trench.
"I do not see the means of preventing this subletting . . . Subdivisions of farms by tenants, for the purpose of alienation, are always ruinous."—Dig. Dev. Com. p. 286.Evidence of Charles King O'Hara, Esq., Land Proprietor and Chairman of Board of Guardians.
"Is subletting carried out to any great extent?−It is in general practice when not prevented by the landlord: . . . . it is practised against the consent of the landlord, who endeavours to prevent it by enforcing the penal clauses of the lease, or ousting the tenant, if at will. It is injurious to the interest of all parties, for it lessens capital, increases population, and impoverishes the land."—Dig. Dev. Com. p. 447.