lent to the differences by the fact that the few properties on which the
equipment of the holdings was provided by the landlord were known as
"English-managed estates," and the number of these, Lord Cowper told the
House of Lords in 1887, could be counted on one's fingers.

Irish landlords have been compared, not to English squires, but to the
ground landlords of London, bound to the occupiers only in so far as
they received from their tenants a rent-charge liable to increase as the
tenant improved the holding, or as competition arose with the growth of
population.

The reasons for this state of things are to be found in the number and
the small size of the Irish holdings, but more than this in the fact
that from the first landlords came there in a business capacity.

"Les uns comme les autres," says a French writer, M. Paul-Dubois, "ils
n'ont vu dans la terre Irlandaise qu'une affaire, et non une patrie. Ils
sont restés conquérants en pays de conquête. De là cette conséquence
que, conscients d'être des étrangers, des intrus, ils se sont crus
libres et quittes de toute dette envers le pays, de tous les devoirs de
la propriété."[3]

Planted on land which was confiscated, and, as a result, insecurely
held, to risk the expenditure of money would have been unnatural, the
more so since the expenditure which, in the circumstances, fell upon the
tenant in the matter of improvements, provided the best possible
security to the landlord by making the tenant all the more anxious to
remain on the holding on which he had sunk what little capital he
possessed, and in consequence virtually obliged, at risk of ejection, to
submit unwillingly to periodical enhancements of rent.