sold out at a low price to go to America. (Page 11.) The rest were fed by charity. Large parts all over Ulster, in spite of Tenant-right, are no better than the rest of Ireland, and are as much dissatisfied; yet this is put forth as a system to cure all the evils of the country! The sure result of a bad system is, it breaks down when the pinch comes. For forty years past it has been my clear opinion, as a practical farmer, that the time would come when Ulster would be the poorest part of Ireland, because Tenant-right sucked away from the land the capital that ought to enrich it. Nor are the difficulties at all confined to Donegal.

In the English Agricultural Gazette of August 30 there are two letters from an Ulster farmer who is plainly a man of some education, and, we are told by Mr. Morton, the editor, has often sent him valuable practical notes on farming subjects. The letters are nothing else but a prolonged scream against rents and landlords, with really piteous and pitiable appeals to landlords and to Parliament to lower rents out of charity, and every other motive he can think of. Of course he does not say that he or his predecessor bought the Tenant-right of his farm from the previous tenant for a large sum, knowing perfectly the rent it was subject. to, and without any thought of the landlord, thus proving the farm to be worth more than the rent he pays. He calls himself one of an oppressed and down-trodden class; talks of landlords rolling in wealth, and tries to excite all the prejudice and ill-feeling which the Land League habitually relies on, because, having made a bad bargain in buying Tenant-right, his landlord does not save him from the consequent loss.

Well may Mr. A. M. Sullivan, the Home Rule M.P., suggest, as he does, that the price of Tenant-right shall be fixed by arbitration, as well as the rent. I wonder how the tenants who now own Tenant-right will like that No. 254.-VOL. XLIII.

proposal.

It is a blessed foretaste of the wise principles on which Ireland will be governed under Home Rule. Why should not everything be settled by arbitration? Prices of corn and meat, etc. To any one who can read between the lines, both Mr Sullivan's letter and Mr. Tuke's pamphlet are more than instructive.

(2) The Land Act makes Tenantright legally binding in all parts of Ireland as much as in Ulster, wherever like customs exist. There are many estates in other parts, of which Lord Portsmouth's in Wexford is a leading example, on which the custom of Tenantright has been allowed to grow up. Whenever this has happened with the consent of landlord and tenant, no one has a right to say anything against it. If it is unsound in principle, it must be left to cure itself in time, and meanwhile it does not hinder others from acting on sounder principles, or stop, except to a small extent, the general progress of the country, which depends on sound principle, and on nothing else. Tenantright is liked by agents, because it greatly lessens their trouble in collecting rents and getting rid of bad tenants, who must be turned out. The rent is always safe, and a broken tenant goes out with much less trouble when he is to receive a lot of money on doing so. Naturally when a tenant paid nothing at all for his farm at hiring, he finds it pleasant and profitable if he leaves it-perhaps by his own fault, from indolence or drinkto receive a great sum also for nothing.

Forty years ago, I remember, it was much discussed in the South, among landowners and agents, whether the introduction of the Ulster Tenant-right on their estates would be advantageous? Having thoroughly seen its working in Ulster, I have never had any doubt that the common way of fair contract between landlord and tenant is much better for both; that the tenants would gain far more by using their money in better stocking and manuring their farms, and that they need every

K

shilling for those purposes; that paying away their capital to broken tenants, for land which had been utterly exhausted, and which can only be restored by more capital, could only be ruinous. Besides, in those days very few of my men had any money. What could they have done under Tenant-right, and with their farms often intermixed in four or five separate parts of the estate? Unless by going in debt, not one of them under the Ulster custom could have got an acre more than he had, or a better situated field

(3) The payment of the arrears of rent out of the purchase money of Tenant-right differs in nothing from the payment of a fine to the landlord, which in England everybody understands would ruin any estate, and has therefore been almost wholly abandoned there. Nothing but the great ignorance in Ireland of sound principles in all that relates to land prevents such a system being scouted as the utter folly it really is. Tenant-right is in substance a fine far beyond the amount of any fine ever heard of anywhere else, or that the hardest landlord ever exacted. Such fines as seven years value were never dreamed of. The usual copyhold fines are a mere flea-bite in comparison.

(4) Judge Longfield's article in the Fortnightly for August shows throughout that he knows nothing of practical farming and management of land. Yet it is on such knowledge of land that the question turns, and no legal knowledge will make up for the want of it. Judge Longfield does not say a word on the undoubted evil of stripping a tenant bare of capital needed for better farming his land, but proposes that somehow the tenant should pay seven years' rent to the landlord for Tenant-right. Seven years of say 507. a year is 3507. Where are tenants to be found with capital enough to pay this, make all permanent improvements, and farm the land besides? My tenants are richer than most, yet I doubt if I have

one able to do it, except by going in debt. Judge Longfield's whole scheme is a milder Ulster Tenant-right, honestly recognising in part the rights of owners to their land. It is open to the same difficulties and objections still, as a breach of the rights of owners, unless he means it to be left wholly voluntary. He suggests that the rent may vary every ten years, upon principles as complicated as a Chinese puzzle, just as if nobody had ever heard of the working of leases for nineteen or twenty-one years in Scotland and their benefit, and that the best farming authorities in the kingdom believe such twenty-one year leases to be the greatest gain to landlords and tenants alike; and that under the modern system of high feeding and manuring, which alone pays, it is impossible in less than nineteen years to recompense the tenant for honest outlay in good farming.

That on which legal Tenant-right wholly rests, is custom. In Parliament it was put on the same ground as copyhold custom in England. In forty years no tenant of mine has ever paid or received a shilling for Tenant-right. If the custom is to be acted on in my case (and thousands of others) Tenant-right is simply impossible. I have given nearly all my tenants larger, many much larger farms than they had. Every farm is near the homestead, with no scattered fields. Most are paying smart rents, but there are no arrears. Many tenants have become wealthy. The two rent days are fixed at times most convenient to them for paying. No excuse except positive misfortune is taken. I believe the regular payment has been a great gain to them. They know that after the rent is paid all remaining is their own. There is nothing hanging over them to keep them down. They begin early to prepare for the next rent day, and so are ready without pressure or loss. All these things tend to industry and exertion, by which they gain far more than they would by the easiest rents. It is very convenient to me too.

I shall be happy to show my tenants against those of any equal number of acres, on Lord Portsmouth's estate or any other, where Tenant-right is allowed, in wealth, condition of their farms, and good farming.

The simple fact is that money laid out by the farmer in manuring exhausted land will pay him many times better than any other way he can spend it. Ten, twenty, fifty per cent is a common return. Often all the money comes back in the first crop, and pays well for years after. What money my men had, they thus laid out, instead of stripping themselves bare to buy Tenant-right. In consequence, the condition of their farms is much better, and when times were good they were fast making money. Many are now wealthy men. There are few who are not comfortable, or whom I should wish to change.

(5) The fatal objection to the Ulster Tenant-right is that in buying it, all or a great part of whatever capital an incoming tenant has is absorbed, often leaving him without the means of farming well, and always crippled in means. There can be no doubt that in Ireland the farming class is far less wealthy than the same class in England and Scotland. Yet whilst in England care is taken to let only men with sufficient capital into farms, we are told that it will be for the advantage of all future Irish farmers to sink in the pocket of the out-going tenant, (who nine times out of ten failed, because he was indolent or a drunkard), a great part of their small capital, and to pay to the landlord a heavy fine in the shape of arrears of rent. All this is only to save the broken tenant from being forced to earn an honest living as a labourer-which any one who likes, can do now, in most parts of Ireland, as easily as he can in England or Scotland-and to enable him to spend the money he gets in idling and drinking.

An actual case will enable the best

judgment to be formed. Last January I ejected a tenant for non-payment

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of rent who was a drunken rake. His farm was fifty-two acres at 521. a year. It was good land, but for many years he had done nothing to it in manuring or anything else. Twice I have seen his corn left in the field till winter, being not worth paying labourers to cut it, and he too lazy to do it himself, though idling about all day at the public-houses. His eight cows he let to a dairyman, his own wife, a strong young woman, being too idle to manage them. cows paid his rent, and more, till last year, when I was glad to get rid of him, as a discredit to the estate. I re-let the farm at once for 647. per annum to a Scotchman. I engaged to put up good buildings that will cost me 2007. There was a good house and barn before, a large part of the cost of which I paid thirtyfive years ago for the tenant's father, an honest, thriving fellow, who lived comfortably and prospered. All other buildings were wholly ruinous, the land dirty and exhausted. If there had been Ulster Tenant-right, ten years' purchase, at least 5207., should have been paid to this worthless man for nothing. (Under Mr. Forster's Disturbance Bill I should have had to pay him four years' rent, 2087.) In addition to the 5207., the Scotchman would of course have had to put up buildings for himself costing 2007.-7207. capital spent for a farm of fifty-two acres. Where was the further capital to come from for stocking, manuring, and farming it? 107. an acre, 500l., was wanted for this purpose. Nowhere are men to be found with 1,2007. capital to lay out on a farm of fifty-two acres. The interest on the money alone, at 10 per cent

would be 120l. a year, 47s. 6d. per acre, leaving the rent 24s. per acre, a trifle by comparison. Having added largely to nearly all my tenants' farms, without the increase having cost them one shilling of capital in any way, I am able to give any number of similar cases. So much do I feel the importance to myself of a new

tenant having his whole capital available, that I do not make him pay any of the expense of his lease, or even the stamps upon it.

(6). Another objection to Tenantright is the undue competition when land is hired, far more severe than that the greatest screw of a landlord ever puts on his tenants. The average rent of the country is much below the value of the land. Even those who look for higher rent, take care that it is not more than the tenant is able to pay, else the rent is only promised, and cannot be paid. But with Tenant-right, the competition is wholly unchecked, extreme, and often ruinous. The outgoing tenant of course wants the last penny. He cares nothing at all for the future of the farm. With the jealous habits of our people towards each other, they often bid quite without sense from boastfulness. It is here the influence of a landlord with judgment might usefully come in. If he had any real power where Tenantright prevails he would not accept a tenant who was offered after such competition, nor allow a son, who succeeds to the farm, to be stripped bare of the capital needful to farm the land to a profit, for the gain of the rest of the family.

Once Tenant-right is made compulsory by law, there is an end of the landlord's power for good, though men in Parliament often talk as if after landlords have been fleeced at their pleasure they ought still to cooperate, as it is called, in carrying out the measures for their own injury. Some complain that they do not thus co-operate in working the Land Act. It would be just as reasonable to expect that a sheep would co-operate with the shearer who clips it, or with the butcher who cuts its throat. What is the use of expecting that landlords will exert themselves, and take trouble, and incur odium in regulating an estate when they will gain nothing by its good management, nor lose if it is

badly managed? Let it be observed, too, that if the Tenant-right system was made compulsory in the rest of Ireland, it is only the present tenants who would gain anything. Their successors, even their own sons, would have to pay the utmost farthing of the value. It would put a great gift into the pockets of existing tenants out of the landlord's reversion, which reversion Parliament has no right to touch unless by buying it.

(7) Another bad effect of Tenantright is, that it deprives the owner of the power of selecting the best tenants for vacant farms, or of re-arranging farms, the fields of which are scattered and intermixed. Whoever will give most money to the broken tenant must get the farm just as it stands. On neglected estates such intermixed farms are very common. It is impossible for the tenants to improve till they are re-arranged. In the case of the farm of fifty-two acres, just mentioned, it would have paid me best to hold it myself. I let it to the Scotchman, because I thought his good farming as a man who had to make it pay, would be an excellent example, and do more good than farming it myself. In parts of England and Scotland it is not uncommon for a clever, industrious labourer, who has saved some money, to hire a small farm, perhaps with the help of friends, and if times favour him to work himself up gradually into the position of a considerable farmer. These are often the best farmers in the district, and their rise is thoroughly wholesome and useful to all. But under Tenant-right such choice of good tenants would have no place. The first requisite, where Tenant-right exists, is that to hire even fifty acres a man must have large capital to pay for the Tenantright, to make all permanent improvements, and of course to farm the land afterwards.

(8) This brings me to another objection. It is never worth a landlord's while to lay out money in improvements where there is Tenant-right.

The

He could not raise the rent enough to pay the interest on any large outlay for improvements, and if he made such outlay, he would be adding to the value of what the tenant would have to sell at leaving. There can thus be no sufficient profit to the landlord to lead him to lay out money; and thus all money laid out in improvements would have to be found by the tenant alone. Those of us who now do all improvements ourselves would cease to do so. great number who now pay part of the cost of improvements would also stop doing so. Some have so stopped because of the Land Act. Loans for draining, of which so many have been taken by landlords, would cease to be taken. And this, though all the available capital of Landlords and Tenants together for generations is wanted to make the necessary permanent improvements on land in Ireland! Those who wish the landlords to leave the country, could not do better than promote the extension of Tenantright. Whoever knows how much the good working of every part of Local Government depends on the landlords, had better well consider the question. It may be relied on, there is no need to add to the inducement for any man of education not to live in Ireland; and but for the pleasure and profit of seeing an estate improve, very few would undergo it. To few can it prove more profitable than it has done to me. Besides the gain from an improved estate, from rent paid with very little trouble, and no ill-will, and from very successful farming, I bought much land after the famine which has paid me well and given much satisfaction to the tenants. Yet, in spite of such gain, and of the pleasure of seeing one's people thriving, and being on good terms with them, it is a sorely heavy drag to live here. And though I have seen as lovely a place grow up under my hands as can be found in the South of Ireland, if the Government likes to pay the honest value of it all, I shall gladly leave it, and think my son a

These are some of the practical objections to to making the Ulster Tenant-right compulsory, and also to that modification which some have described as fixity of tenure, fair rents, valued by County Court judges, and free liberty to the tenant to sell his interest-plans all open to the same objections as Tenant-right.

(9) The objections on principle are still more weighty. A number of witnesses in favour of Tenant-right were called before the Duke of Richmond's Commission. This question was put to each of them: "A man hires land for the purpose of farming it. He lays out a considerable sum in improvements, which repay him, both principal and interest. Where, or on what principle of right, does he get a just claim to be paid a large sum besides if he leave the farm?" Of course no one could answer the question.

The claim of tenants who have not, with the assent of the landlord, paid their predecessors for Tenant-right, to receive a large sum on leaving the farm, is, as lawyers would say, wholly without consideration. The tenant has done nothing to give him a just right to be thus paid. At best, it is a case of nudum pactum, and therefore void for want of consideration, even though there was an express contract. And, besides, the payment is really taken out of the reversion, which belongs to the landlord, and the value of which it reduces. If an incoming tenant is to pay 5007. for a farm of fifty acres, the interest on that sum at 5 per cent is 251. a year. This is 10s. per acre on the farm, and if he had not to pay his 5007., but had to pay 5s. an acre extra rent instead, he would be a gainer of 127. 10s. a year. Even if he had to pay 10s. per acre extra rent, he would still be better off, because he would have his 5007. capital to lay out in manure and help to make the

rent.