The Halpern–Läuchli theorem, a combinatorial result about trees, admits an elegant proof due to Harrington using ideas from forcing. In an attempt to distill the combinatorial essence of this proof, we isolate various partition principles about products of perfect Polish spaces. These principles yield straightforward proofs of the Halpern–Läuchli theorem, and the same forcing from Harrington’s proof can force their consistency. We also show that these principles are not ZFC theorems by showing that they put lower bounds on the size (...) of the continuum. (shrink)