professing the same religion as his tenants, might consider it not only a very convenient, but a very
more than food for the rapidly accumulating population to be fed out of it. When subdivided with tenants' sons it encourages improvident and early marriages (already too general), and consequently a fall in the condition of the farmer; and, when sublet for the sake of income to cottiers, a most exacting rent is enforced with rigorous punctuality in the shape of money and labour utterly disproportioned to the value received, and leading the farmer rather to depend upon this income than upon his own industry, and is therefore a great discouragement to agricultural improvement.
"I conceive the evil at this moment is, that if a man comes into a farm held under me, he subdivides it, and before I can take any proceedings against him, the evil has grown up, and I should have to increase the evil by driving the man out." Dig. Dev. Com. p. 428.Evidence of H. L. Prentice, Esq. Agent to Lord Caledon.
(Armagh and Tyrone.)
Evidence of James Johnson, Esq., Land Proprietor.