Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/255

original purchase money has not been paid;^[1] while Mr. Michelet has declared the position of the

 dix acres. Celui qui avait entre les mains un petit capital disponible, ne s'en servait pas pour améliorer sa terre, mais pour en acquérir une nouvelle. La concurrence des acheteurs a produit une telle hausse que le revenu net est tombé en plus d'un endroit au-dessous de 2 pour 100. Et plus d'un malheureux, aveuglé par la passion, empruntait à des taux usuraires de quoi payer le prix de sou champ! C'était la ruine organisée; la ruine des homines et de sol." * * *

" Changeons le point de vue. Suivez-moi en Alsace, dans une

tional houses, and have a clause to take down those additional houses, they will live in one house; the daughter will marry, and the son-in-law will be brought in, and the son will marry and bring in his wife."—Dig. Dev. Com, p. 254.

Rich. Byrne, Esq., Vice Chairman of the Board of Guardians.

"Is the charge left upon the farm for the unprovided daughters and sons, by the father, generally very disproportionate to the value of the farm?—Yes, where he makes a will, it is; but where he fortunes them out during his life, he generally gives much larger fortunes than he ought, considering the value of his land, to give. I have known an instance of a man holding four acres of ground, getting three daughters married, to each of whom he gave £20 fortune; and another man holding fourteen acres got three of his daughters married, to each of whom he gave £25 fortune; and those were both tenants holding at will." Ibid. p. 386.

Mr. Thomas Bradford, Farmer.

"How do the tenantry generally provide for their children
1.  "Many of the so-called peasant proprietors of France have not completed the purchase of their property, and are more properly tenants at a fixed rent." Thornton's Peasant Proprietors, p. 157.

   The total amount of the encumbrances on land in France is not excessive; but the burden does not seem to be evenly distributed: all the evidence points to a congestion of debt on the very small properties.