also as to the proper period for the limitation of actions. We are told of an old beggarman who day after day returns to take up a position in front of Castle Callaghan, recently purchased by Mr. Brown of Liverpool. Wondering at the pertinacity of the visitor, the owner accosted him. "You come here pretty often. You seem to like this place." "I do," says the seeming beggar; "it 'ud be mine this day if all men had their rights." Allah Akbar! thinks the Saxon-God is great-what pedigrees these Irish have! And he thinks he has before him a lineal descendant of some chief in Erris,

"When Malachi wore the collar of gold

Which he won from the proud invader,"

and he wonders at the mutability of human things, and the pride of ancestry, which makes the descendant of kings disdain to toil like a slave where his fathers ruled, and many other great and deep thoughts are in his mind. But this is all poetry: the man does not know whether he had a great grandfather; but he means that the land was his for ever once, and would be so still, but that he neglected to pay his rent and fines— or but that, for no fault of his, perhaps, the head landlord came in and turned them all out-him and his neighbours. And so there are many other equally ragged gentlemen, equally attached to other parts of the domain of Castle Callaghan; and Mr. Brown thinks himself lucky when the three shots fired at him next night only take effect on his horse and his hat. He leaves Ireland the day after, and next week an agent comes down, who can stand fire; and there is one more middleman in Ireland than there was on the day when Mr. Brown first spoke to the beggarman.

We have entered at some length into the nature and consequences of the renewable leaseholds in Ireland, because the mischiefs arising from them do not appear to us to be sufficiently estimated. It is asked, how can that tenure be so mischievous in Ireland?-how can disturbances and murder be attributed to it there, when in England it is so innocent? In the first place, we answer that it is not nearly so frequent here as in Ireland, and that it very obviously may be productive of greater evils there, multiplied as it is by the practice of subletting, especially taking into consideration the generally disturbed state of the agricultural parts of the country from other causes, -religious and repeal agitations for instance, and the pauperised condition of the population. We do not attribute to this tenure, or to the practice of underletting, solely, all the disturbances in Ireland. The law of real property is not the only

subject in which error can be ascribed to the policy or conduct of the legislature. And besides, the peculiar Irish equity entirely alters the tenure. To a lessee not guilty of fraud, these leases present an absolutely indefeasible perpetuity, just as much as a fee-simple. No neglect or laches on his part,-no lapse of time can deprive him of the right to obtain the assistance of a court of equity to renew and confirm his estate And accordingly we find the lessee generally considers himself as the owner of the land, in which, in point of fact, he certainly has a larger interest than his lessor. But the lessor has the higher interest, and he too considers himself the owner of the land, and strictly speaking he is so. He will triumphantly point out that it is not a dry, unprofitable reversion or seignory that remains in him, with little but the honour, like the lordship of a manor,—that the annual rent payable to him is not on the other hand a mere rent-charge, for which he may indeed distrain when in arrear, but which gives him no property in the land itself; and while he points out the injustice of the old " equity," he shows you at the same time that fraud at least will deprive his tenant of that plank, and that instances of fraud are not so unfrequent as to render his chance of the benefit of a forfeiture valueless. The lessee and all his underlessees in the meantime do not suffer themselves to be disturbed by these speculations while enjoying the substantial benefits of the land; but it is no small evil that five or six persons may thus be possessed of what they deem indefeasible rights to the perpetual enjoyment of a single field, rights which do not easily admit of an adjustment, and which may so soon be scattered to the winds by acts or neglects over which the greater part of the claimants have no control.

It will readily be seen, especially from what has just been advanced, that the mischievous tendency of leases of this description is aggravated, and the opportunities of mischief multiplied, by the well-known practice of subletting. This practice, innocent enough in itself, even necessary in a vast number of instances, is an example of the fatality we have just noticed, as brooding over every measure and practice connected with Ireland. In many instances,-mining adventures, building leases, and the like, it is a very useful practice; but not in lands destined to the purposes of agriculture. In the first class of cases, the first adventurer has only skill and capital sufficient to do the first rough work; and it is necessary to call in the aid of others deriving an interest under him to complete the details which may render the whole profitable. But this is not the case in agriculture. There the same skill and capital can carry out all the operations necessary for deriving the utmost advantage

from that science. Middlemen, therefore, though they may be justly allowed in some instances, are useless when they appear in this branch of industry. And, as has been elsewhere observed, agriculture,-under which term we would include all means of producing food from fields, whether by pasturage or tillage, is the main employment of the Irish labouring classes. But if it be allowed to be expedient to have an intermediate class, it by no means follows that it is expedient to have three or four interposed. Such a multiplication is worse than useless. It is mischievous, were it only for the reason that it increases beyond what is just the proportion of the idle to the industrious classes. It is useful and proper in every community, above the first stage of society, to have a small class maintained in idleness by the labour of the multitude. But there are limits which must be narrowly watched, and beyond which the proportion of these two classes must not be carried. It may be difficult à priori to point out the line of demarcation, or to ascertain it theoretically; practically, every transgression of that line makes itself instantly felt; and it will be readily conceded that this line has been transgressed in Ireland. The immediate consequence is a double evil; the productive classes are diminished, and an increased unhealthy burthen is laid upon the part that remains. The productive class is diminished from ten to nine; and instead of one individual, two must be supported in idleness. Thus nine men have to support two, instead of ten men maintaining one. It is obvious that the latter may be a useful task; the other an intolerable burthen.

The evils arising from the multiplied subtenancies have often attracted attention. Indignant orators have held up Irish middlemen to national hatred and contempt; none have been louder in their strain than the Irish themselves; but the evil still continues. The imperial legislature has endeavoured once and again to bring a remedy; but the evil still remains. In social diseases, as in diseases of the mind, the patient must minister to himself. It is of the very essence of a right of property in land, to have over it a power of alienation for the whole or any less interest. Restraints upon alienation are contrary alike to the requirements of reason and of commerce; and they are accordingly odious to the English law, which seeks every opportunity of evading them where they are annexed to an estate either by implication or by express words. It was through the favour with which they regarded alienation that the judges were led to make the dicision in Taltarum's case,-it was on this ground, that general provisions against alienation annexed to freehold estates

are held to be void; and to mention no other examples, on this ground stands the well-known rule, that even in leases for years, if there be a clause against any alienation without consent of the lessor on pain of forfeiture, yet if such consent be once generally given, the forfeiture is held to be for ever waived; and if advantage of the forfeiture be not immediately taken by the lessor, it will be equally held to be waived. This doctrine was of course ex animo æquo transplanted from our courts into the Irish. But there it was speedily found that some modification of it was necessary. Both lessors and courts of justice perceived that it was calculated to shelter and propagate mischiefs at work there, which in this country never came into existence, that it increased the facilities for subletting, by removing the impediments which landlords sometimes endeavoured to create; for if they neglected or were unwilling to take advantage of any forfeiture under such a clause, it became waived by implication of the law. This implication could only be prevented by act of parliament; and accordingly the Subletting Act of 1826 was passed, which not only expressly provided against any presumption of waiver, arising from neglect to take advantage of a forfeiture, or particular licence to alien, but even enacted that it should not be lawful for the lessee to sublet, or even devise to more persons than one, and that although the lease contained no clause or stipulation against alienation. The act became very unpopular, and it was particularly objected that the last-mentioned provision was an unnecessary interference with the arrangements between the parties, who, if they objected to unlicensed alienation, might introduce a clause to that effect in the lease. Accordingly in 1832, the second Subletting Act, the one now in force, was passed, which repealed the first, and in general re-enacted it, with the exception of these objectionable provisions.

The renewable leasehold tenure extends only, it is said, over a seventh of the country; and the mischiefs to which it gives birth are of course confined to that, although multiplied by the practice of subletting. But this practice, subletting, extends to lands of every tenure: not confined to one class, it spreads a baneful influence over all. Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may boast, like Germany of the thirteenth and fourteenth, a peculiar class of aristocracy. Germany had her robber knights; Ireland can produce her squireens. And the third great source of evil in the present state of real property in Ireland, absenteeism, like the last mentioned, is confined to no particular tenure; equally indiscriminate and fatal in its

influence, it is only inferior, because it is incapable of that indefinite multiplication which renders the middleman squireen the worst blight of Ireland. You may have, and you continually find, a middleman upon a middleman. You cannot have an absentee upon on absentee.

Although in our opinion absenteeism is the lesser evil of the two, it is incomparably the more unpopular. The absentee's rent is in fact so many quarters of wheat, or tons of butter or bacon, produced by Irish toil and Irish fields, and taken out of Ireland to be placed carriage-free in London, Paris, Florence or Geneva. This fact is too obvious to escape attention, too simple not to be appreciated by every looker-on who sees the corn grow or the vessels sail and it lies too ready for introduction into the philippics of demagogues not to be repeatedly, and in the most violent terms, pointed out to every audience.

It is also obvious that every absentee creates at least one middleman. And no doubt the continued drain of agricultural produce, in order to pay an absentee's rent, must render increased efforts and production necessary in order that the capital remaining in the island-whether it consist of corn, cattle, currency or railroads may suffer no diminution. But many in arguing state the case as if the absentee drained away the gross produce of the land whereas it is but the rent, i.e. the landlord's ultimate share of the net profit of cultivation which goes, not even the whole gross profit. The absentee does not by his absence diminish the productive class by a single individual; and the drain he occasions, so far as it affects the state, is immediately remediable if wholesome extra exertion on the part of the industrious classes can replace what has been so taken; i. e. can produce articles, whether of luxury or primary utility, of sufficient value in the eyes of the inhabitants of London, Paris, Florence or Geneva, to purchase back the wheat, bacon and butter previously sent to their shores. And there is no doubt that the natural capabilities of Ireland,-the fertility of her fields, the richness of her mines, the productiveness of her fisheries, are so great,—such the facilities both for sea and inland navigation, to say nothing of railways, that were her inhabitants but imbued with the spirit of industry and independence, and the same horror of bloodshed which characterize her Saxon neighbours, she could well repair the drain, though every landowner in the Green Isle were to spend his rent abroad. The drain so complained of is merely a financial evil, which a little exertion would meet and remedy; and the parties making the exertion would be all the better for it. But the middleman is a social evil. Increase the productiveness and resources of Ireland: they are turned to corruption