improvements. Instead of that, however, their tenants sublet their
holdings in smaller lots to others; and these subtenants did the same
again; thus there were sometimes three or four middlemen, and the rent
paid by the actual occupier to his immediate landlord was ten times
the amount the nominal owner received. As the rate of wages
was miserably low, and the rent of a cabin and a plot of ground
scandalously high, how the wretched occupiers managed to keep body and
soul together is a mystery. Much has been written about the useless,
dissipated lives of these middlemen or "squireens"; and no doubt it is
to a great extent true, although, like everything else in Ireland, it
has been exaggerated. Travellers have told us of some landlords
who resided on their estates, did their utmost to improve them, and
forbade subletting (in spite of the unpopularity caused by their doing
so). And one of the remarkable features of later Irish history is that
whenever there was a period of acute difficulty and danger there were
always country gentlemen to be found ready to risk their lives and
fortunes or to undertake the thankless and dangerous duties of county
magistrates.

It is curious how close a parallel might be drawn between the way
in which Norman Ireland was Ersefied and that in which Cromwellian
Ireland was Catholicized. Many of those who became large landowners
by the Cromwellian confiscations, having no religious prejudices (some
might say, no religious or humane feelings), when the leases of
their tenants fell in, put the farms up to auction regardless of the
feelings of the occupiers. As the Roman Catholics were content with
a simpler manner of life than the Protestants, they generally offered
higher rents; the dispossessed Protestants, driven from their homes,
joined their brethren in America. Then in the South, the poorer of
Cromwell's settlers, in some cases, neglected by their own pastors,