subletting, would be rather an increase of security than a source of
alarm. Any evil from such a practice would be improbable
measurable, and remediable. In land, on the contrary, the object is
not to get the highest prices absolutely, but to get the highest
prices which will not injure the machine. One tenant may offer and
pay double the rent of another, and in a few years leave the land in
a state which will effectually bar all future offers of tenancy. It
is of no use to fill a lease full of clauses and covenants; a tenant
who pays more than he ought to pay, or who pays even to the last
farthing which he ought to pay, will rob the land, and injure the
machine, in spite of all the attorneys in England. He will rob it
even if he means to remain upon it--driven on by present distress,
and anxious to put off the day of defalcation and arrear. The
damage is often difficult of detection--not easily calculated, not
easily to be proved; such for which juries (themselves perhaps
farmers) will not willingly give sufficient compensation. And if
this be true in England, it is much more strikingly true in Ireland,
where it is extremely difficult to obtain verdicts for breaches of
covenant in leases.

The only method, then, of guarding the machine from real injury, is
by giving to the actual occupier such advantage in his contract,
that he is unwilling to give it up--that he has a real interest in
retaining it, and is not driven by the distresses of the present
moment to destroy the future productiveness of the soil. Any rent
which the landlord accepts more than this, or any system by which
more rent than this is obtained, is to borrow money upon the most
usurious and profligate interest--to increase the revenue of the
present day by the absolute ruin of the property. Such is the
effect produced by a middleman; he gives high prices that he may