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220 IRELAND [AGRICULTURE, being as follows : Purchased by the Protestants of Con- naught of the transplanters 80,000 acres, possessed by the English and Protestants and Church 5,140,000, possessed by the Irish 2,280,000. Of the 1,100,000 inhabitants, the proportion of Irish to English was as 9 to 3 ; and 6 out of every 8 of the Irish lived in a "brutish nasty condition." After the confiscations which followed the wars of William III., the Catholics did not possess more than one-seventh of the soil. The penal laws by which the Catholics were disabled from holding freehold property tended to effect a still further transference of proprietorship to the Protes tants. The functions of the proprietor were generally per formed by the large Protestant tenant, to whom a long lease of the property was granted, and who sublet to the Irish farmer. Frequently the farms were subdivided and sublet to the third, fourth, or fifth degree, and, as the Catholics were disabled from holding leases for more than thirty-one years, and at less than two-thirds of a rack- rent, they necessarily occupied the lowest step in this peculiar social scale. Instead of an industrious and thriv ing class of peasant proprietors, which the Brehon system left to itself would in all probability have gradually de veloped, a race of wretched cottiers sprang up, whose only inheritance now guaranteed to them by the remains of the old Brehon system was their deep-seated conviction as to their inalienable rights to the soil ; the custom which, without now recognizing these rights, threw upon them the expense not only of fencing, draining, and other improvements, but of the erection of all the dwellings on the farm ; and their dependence on the proprietor, one, however, who was now generally an alien, and from whom they held their small patches of soil on payment in labour according to conditions strung to the utmost degree of severity by the process of subletting and an un limited competition. Support by any other form of industry than agriculture was rendered impossible by laws which practically paralysed the commerce and manufactures of the country, and agriculture itself was additionally hampered by the enactments passed in the reign of Charles II. against the export ition to England of cattle, sheep, and pigs, of salt beef and bacon, and even of butter and cheese. These enactments, combined with that final one by which the prohibition formerly passed against the exportation of woollen manufactures to England or the colonies was ex tended also to foreign countries, caused the "middle men" to turn their attention to woollen smuggling ; and, finding it a more lucrative means of livelihood than that of squeezing money from impoverished tenants, they in many instances drove the cottiers from their farms, which they changed into sheep walks. The Acts of 1771, 1778, and 1782, which removed the Roman Catholic disabilities in regard to the holding of leases and property, and the Act of 1793, which ex tended to the Catholics the forty shillings franchise, had, on account of the peculiar social condition created by f irmsr legislation, practically as disastrous effects as even the penal laws which they superseded. The landlords for election purposes created an immense number of the lowest kind of freeholds, which they let at exorbitant rents owing TABLE V. Holdings of various sizes in to the high price of provisions during the great war. These prices indeed gave a temporary stimulus to agri culture, and led to the conversion of a considerable amount of pasturage into tillage, but practically the position of the freeholder was more servile than that of the previous tenant-at-will, and when prices sank to their normal rate at the close of the war he found himself in a condition of absolute ruin. At the same time, by this minute subdi vision of leaseholds, an immense increase had taken place in the agricultural population, whose numbers could perhaps scarcely have found support under any system of agricul ture, although undoubtedly under a system of peasant proprietorship support would have been possible to a much larger number, inasmuch as the principal profits of tillage would have fallen into the hands of the tillers of the soil instead of those of absentee proprietors. To aid the land lords in freeing themselves from the incubus of impo verished tenants an eviction Act was passed in 1S1G, and further protection was afforded them by the Subletting Act of 1826, but it was not until after the abolition of the forty shilling leasehold suffrage in 1829 that any important diminution took place in the leaseholds. Under tenancy-at- will, which was then generally substituted, the subdivision of holdings was not materially diminished, although for some years previous to the occurrence of the potato blight and the repeal of the Corn Laws more than one-fourth of the population stood in need generally of relief, and the land lord, in order to escape the burdensome taxation consequent upon the Poor Law Act of 1838, had begun the transforma tion of small holdings into large farms. Table IV., compiled from special parliamentaryreturns givingthe number of free holds by counties, will illustrate the influence of various acts of legislation on the growth of freeholds, and especially their rapid increase after 1793 and their rapid decline after 1829. The potato blight and the repeal of the Corn Laws, occurring nearly simultaneously, caused an immediate and almost complete sweep to be made of the smaller class of holdings. The consequence was an enormously rapid dimi nution of the population, which made whole districts of the country almost tenantless, but which, great as it was, only removed the abnormal strain of hardship under which the peasant was suffering, and brought him no permanent relief from his burdens by an increase of wages or more favour able terms of occupancy. Indeed, tenancy -at will was still further increased by the Parliamentary Votes Act of 1850, which granted the suffrage to those who for twelve months were rated as occupiers of land valued at 12 a year. The change which has taken place in the size of the holdings since 1841 is sufficiently indicated in Tables V., VI. and VII. TABLE I V. Freeholds, 1795-1830. 40s. 20. 50. Tot ;il. 1795 4,768 408 344 5,520 1796 64,752 5,109 3,195 73,056 1803 157,159 10,096 7,009 174,264 1821 184,229 15,139 11,063 210,431 1828 191,732 6,806 18,369 216,907 1830 14,246 7,639 17,819 39,704 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1876, and 1880. Not exceeding 1 Acre. Above 1 and not exceeding 5 Acres. Above 5 and not exceeding 15 Acres. Above 15 and not exceeding 30 Acres. Above 30 Acres. Total. Number. Per cent. Number. Per cent. Number. Per cent. Number. Pei- cent. Number. Per cent. Number. 1841 135,314 16-3 310,436 37-4 252,799 307 79,342 97 48,625 5-9 826,516 1851 37,728 6-2 88,083 14-5 191,854 31-6 141,311 23-2 149,090 24-5 608,066 1861 40,080 6 5 85,469 14-1 183,931 30-2 141,251 23-2 157,833 26-0 608,564 1871 48,448 8-2 74,809 12-6 171,383 28-9 138,647 23-3 159,803 27-0 592,590 1876 52,433 9-0 67,524 11-6 164,810 28-3 137,114 23-6 159,872 27-5 581,753 1880 50,613 8 8 64,292 11-2 161,335 28-1 136,518 23-8 161,464 28-1 574,222