Mr. J.H. Tuke discovered by an analysis of the census returns that
the only "townlands" in which the rural population was actually
increasing were those scattered along the western seaboard of Ireland,
where the tenure and the conditions of existence seemed most hopeless.
But, as the Devon Commission announced in 1845, it was an essentially
defective system of land tenure that lay at the root of the perennial
discontent with which Ireland was troubled, and things went from bad to
worse until the Party organised for the defence of the Union and the
social betterment of Ireland took up the task of settling the question
by the transfer on fair terms of the ownership of the soil from the
large landowners to the tenants.

The system of land tenure in England has been the growth of custom
gradually hardening into law; in Ireland the traditional custom was
suddenly abolished, and English law substituted in its place. The
English law was no doubt a better law, and one more fitted to a
progressive community; but in Ireland it violently upset the traditional
law of the country, and, consequently, was met with sullen and
unremitting hostility. By Irish law, the tribe was owner; the tribesmen
were joint proprietors, and the forfeiture of the chief did not involve
the forfeiture of the land occupied by the tribesmen. By English law,
however, these latter, such of them as were not expelled or exiled,
suddenly found themselves transformed from joint-owners into tenants at
will. Further, the difficulty of dealing direct with tenants,
experienced by landlords who were in very many cases absentees, led to
the abominable "middleman" system by which the owner leased great
stretches of land to some one who undertook to "manage" it for him, and
who in turn sub-let it in smaller patches at rack-rents to those who, to
get back their money, had to sub-let again at still higher rents. The
result was, as an official report in the eighteenth century states: "It
is well known that over the most part of the country, the lands are
sub-let six deep, so that those who actually labour it are squeezed to
the very utmost." And Lord Chesterfield, when Viceroy, complained of the
oppression of the people by "deputies of deputies of deputies." The
eighteenth-century policy of checking or suppressing the industrial
enterprises of the English colony aggravated the evil until, as Lord
Dufferin expressed it: "Debarred from every other industry, the entire
nation