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Updated: May 1, 2025
As you have thought proper to turn public accuser, I beg to refer you to Mr Charles Seegrue, the only gentleman in Cork with whom I have had any transactions regarding tenants, and he will inform you on the determination of his interest in a large farm, how many of his under-tenants I dismissed, and what arrangements were made on that occasion.
There was a class of men termed middle men in Ireland, who took large farms on long leases from gentlemen of landed property, and let the land again in small portions to the poor, as under-tenants, at exorbitant rents.
A middleman might be tied up by the strongest legal restriction, as to the price he was to exact from the under-tenants, and then he would be no more pernicious to the estate than a steward. A steward might be protected in exactions as severe as the most rapacious middleman; and then, of course, it would be the same thing under another name.
The head landlord, as he was called, seldom saw his under-tenants; but if he could not get the middle man to pay him his rent punctually, he went to his land, and drove the land for his rent, that is to say, he sent his steward or bailiff, or driver, to the land to seize the cattle, hay, corn, flax, oats, or potatoes, belonging to the under-tenants, and proceeded to sell these for his rents: it sometimes happened that these unfortunate tenants paid their rent twice over, once to the middle man, and once to the head landlord.
The year I was in that neighborhood, the settlement with his under-tenants was something above 3,53,000 rupees. The inhabitants of the country objected to it. They assembled in a body of about five thousand, and were proceeding to Calcutta to make known their grievances to the Committee of Revenue.
A few leases for long terms were signed and sealed; and when I had thus my own way completely, I could not refrain from recurring to Mr. M'Leod's opinion. "I doubt, my lord," said he, "whether this measure may be as advantageous as you hope. These fellows, these middle-men, will underset the land, and live in idleness, whilst they rack a parcel of wretched under-tenants."
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