termination of all leases made before the year 1690, a
gentleman thinks that he has but indifferently improved his estate if he
has only doubled his rent-roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent;
leases granted but for a small term of years; tenants tied down to hard
conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to
the best advantage by the certainty they have of the rent being raised
on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the improvements
they shall make."[46] As to the unlimited power of landlords, and its
tyrannical use, Arthur Young, writing in 1779, less than one hundred
years ago, says: "The age has improved so much in humanity, that even
the poor Irish have experienced its influence, and are every day treated
better and better; but still the remnant of the old manners, the
abominable distinction of religion, united with the oppressive conduct
of the little country gentlemen, or rather vermin, of the kingdom, who
were never out of it, altogether bear still very heavy on the poor
people, and subject them to situations more mortifying than we ever
behold in England. The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman
Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever
concerns the poor to no law but that of his will ... A long series of
oppressions, aided by very many ill-judged laws, have brought landlords
into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals
into that of an almost unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is
despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed,
the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of
_written_ liberty." And again, this enlightened Protestant English
gentleman says of the Irish landlord, that "nothing satisfies him but an
unlimited submission."[47]

Forty years later, some of their more obvious, not to say essential
duties, were brought under the notice of Irish landlords, but in vain.
The writer quoted above on the Famine of 1822 says: "It is therefore a
duty incumbent on all those who possess property, and consequently have
an interest in the prosperity of this country, to prevent a recurrence
of this awful calamity [the Famine], and to provide for those persons
over whom fortune has placed them, and whom they should consider as
entrusted to their care, and entitled to their protection; and this can
only be successfully carried into execution by their procuring and
subst