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entertain very strong doubts as to the attachment of the Irish people to their religious faith, as such, however they may be wedded to it for its political associations. We are not about to enter into this subject now; but we would say, that in the formal, heartless manner in which the Roman Catholic priest celebrates the services of his church-services which the people do not understand, and the very language of which is unintelligible to them; and in the unfeeling way in which money is demanded for the administering its rites, ay, even the last rite of extreme unction, there is nothing, there can be nothing, to engage the affections of the people. Let but intelligence and independence prevail in the land, and the priestly power is overthrown. There is no affection, no sympathy, beyond the fellowship in sedition, to support it. But through the very men who are themselves interested in keeping the people ignorant and disaffected, enlightenment and prosperity never can be diffused. It would be the most hollow clap-trap that ever minister descended to, to affect to promote the interests of Ireland by the advancement of its priests; it would hold him up to the contempt and scorn of all men of sense or worth, and to the just indignation of the loyal Protestants of Ireland, the mainstay of order and of the English authority, but whose affection and allegiance it would go far to estrange.

No; there must be no tampering with treason; it is by agency and influences very different from that of the priests that the country is to be advanced. We are entirely convinced that the destiny of Ireland rests with the proprietors of the soil. Govern

ment can do much, by vigorously upholding the laws, and sternly suppressing sedition, but otherwise it can do little, except by a few-a very fewwholesale enactments. Emigration is impracticable. A forced system of manufactures, if it were possible, would be most injurious, so long as the great manufacture of all-the manufacture of the land is not developed to one-twentieth of its productive power. Public works are but a temporary expedient, and necessarily limited in their extentthe state never can take on itself the office of employing the whole disengaged

labor of the country. No; it is on the right adjustment of the relations of landlord and tenant, putting both parties in a position to discharge their respective duties, and giving them an incentive to do so, and restoring confidence and harmony to this most delicate relation, that the hope of Ireland now rests. We believe it is perfectly possible to bring about so desirable a change, but it cannot be accomplished at once-the evils of centuries cannot be remedied in a day.

As we stated in our last number, a great amount of the soil of Ireland is vested in proprietors whose estates are deeply involved in such a host of mortgages, annuities, judgment-debts, and other incumbrances, that it is perfectly impossible they can discharge the duties which they owe to themselves, their tenantry, or the country. The owner has no interest in the landits income goes to these incumbrancers, who have no concern for its improvement. It must always be borne in mind, when dealing with this subject, that the ownership of land is of a very peculiar character-it is not a natural, it is a social right. The state confers it upon certain proprietors for the benefit of all, and is perfectly entitled to impose the conditions on which it shall be enjoyed. This right is practically exercised in all countries by the seve ral laws which everywhere prevail, as to the mode of descent of landed property, and by the limitations which are imposed on the devising power of its owners. It is given to its possessors to use, and not to destroy; and the reason is obvious; for while "limited in extent, all must ultimately derive their support from it." We proposed, then, that such heavily-encumbered estates should be sold-that some properly-constituted authority should be appointed to determine upon, and conduct such sales under the court of chancery-that the purchasers, on depositing their purchase-money, should have a perfectly clear title, as at present under the railway acts-that the purchase-money should be invested in the public securities, and the several incumbrancers draw their interest, according to their respective priorities, from the government fund instead of from the land, and that if any of the incumbrancers objected to this security, it should be open to such

persons to institute a suit to realise his demand from this fund, as he may at present institute a suit to realise his demand, by the sale of the estate on which he is an incumbrancer. We also advocated, to the best of our ability, the principle of the bill which was then before parliament, for bringing encumbered estates, in all cases where suits affecting such estates should be instituted, at once to a sale; without waiting to determine on the conflicting rights of hosts of claimants in all the protracted delay of a cause in chancery, leaving these parties to assert their rights to the purchase-money-the produce of such sale; but letting the land itself at once go free into the hands of the purchaser, thereby avoiding the heavy expense, and unavoidable mismanage. ment of receivers under courts of equity.

The arguments by which we endeavoured to sustain these measures, we will not here weary our readers by repeating. But we may observe, that our attention has been called, by the evidence of Dr. Longfield before Lord Devon's commission, to a peculiar disadvantage under which the encumbered lands of Ireland labour, and which, in our judgment, increases the necessity for the measure we propose for the compulsory sale of such estates. It arises from the practice, which has long prevailed in Ireland, of borrowing money on judgments, which override the entire property of which the borrower is possessed at the time of the loan, or which he may, at any time subsequently, acquire, instead of borrowing, as in England, on the security of a mortgage of a sufficient portion of the estate, by which practice that portion of property included in the mortgage is alone liable to the debt. By the English practice, if the lender wishes to raise his money, he files his bill for the foreclosure merely of the mortgaged property; whereas in Ireland, the judgment-creditor must file his bill for the sale of all the estate of his debtor, no matter how great its extent, or how numerous the incumbrancers, all of whom must be parties to the suit. To encounter all the risk and expense of such a suit, for the purpose of realising a demand of, perhaps, some few hundred pounds, would, of course, be the extreme of folly. Few creditors would be ill-advised enough to attempt it-and thus the Irish sys

tem of raising money is an effectual bar to land being brought freely into commerce; it contravenes the policy of all the law against tying up estates for perpetuity, and it ties them up in the most destructive manner, clogged with a number of incumbrancers, who have no immediate interest in their improvement, or no control over their management. Dr. Longfield proposes, as a remedy for this particular evil, that judgments should not be a lien on estates in the hands of a purchaser ; and that consequently a person in want of money would be obliged to sell or mortgage a portion of his property commensurate to his wants, without encumbering his whole estate. Dr. Longfield's suggestion would unquestionably meet this particular evil; his proposal, however, it occurs to us, would need some modification; for we hardly suppose that the learned gentleman would include "judgments in case" in his proposal-that is, judgments obtained in actions at law for the recovery of debt. If he were to do so, he would, as it appears to us, materially interfere with the rights of creditors. The evil, however, which he notices, taken with the other evils which we have mentioned in connexion with heavily encumbered estates, presses on us the conviction that some carefully-considered measure must be at once devised for bringing to sale all such estates in which the legal owner has no beneficial interest, or none in comparison to the magnitude of the property.

And here we may mention the very great injustice that is done by allow ing mortgagees and other incumbrancers upon property to receive the full amount of their interest, without contributing anything to the very heavy public charges, the whole bur den of which is now thrown upon the proprietor. If a man with £5,000 to invest, chooses to purchase an estate, he must bear its proportion of poorrates, county cess, and other taxes; but if he prefers lending his £5,000 on an adjacent property, he escapes all these burdens entirely, and throws the whole of them on the embarrassed borrower. A landlord with an estate worth £5,000 a-year, and not, perhaps, £500 a-year nett surplus for his own support, is obliged, by the present system, out of this miserable rem

nant, to defray all the public burthens to which the whole estate is rated, while the mortgagee and other creditors escape free. This is a crying injustice to the landlord, and it completes the impossibility of his doing anything for the improvement of his property. The pressure of this evil called forth the following remonstrance from the Galway grand jury for the present summer assizes, in an address adopted by them to the House of Commons:

"That we humbly entreat of your honourable house to consider the hardship and injustice of laying the whole burden of relieving the country's destitution on the landlords alone, who are themselves suffering so deeply from the national calamity; while other parties, deriving large incomes from land, without trouble or loss, contribute nothing to its support."

We earnestly hope that the prayer of this remonstrance, founded as it is on the plainest justice to the petitioners, and most obvious policy to the country at large, may command the attention which it merits in the imperial parliament.

As regards properties which are not thus encumbered by debts, but which are limited in strict settlement, we would earnestly recommend that power should be given to the tenant-for-life to make such permanent improvements in the construction of buildings, fences, drainage, and such-like, as would be of lasting benefit to the country, and that he should be entitled to charge the outlay which such improvements would amount to on the inheritance. An alteration in the law in this respect is greatly needed; it is the more necessary now, because that the want of some such power in persons having limited estates has drawn down the animadversions of very many well-intentioned men on the existing system of entail in these countries.

We ex

amined this subject in the paper in our last number, to which we have already referred, and there expressed our clear conviction, that the system of entail, limited and restricted as it is in this country and in England, is eminently conducive to the well-being of families, and of the very essence of the English constitution. And it is because we would see this system main

tained that we now press upon the legislature the importance of obviating one evil to which, in Ireland at least, it is subject that, namely, of barring any outlay for improvement of estates. And we would extend this power of the tenant-for-life not merely against remainder-men, but against creditors. The very great proportion of estates in Ireland are of that class in which, although the landlord has a clear beneficial interest, they are yet subject to a certain amount of encumbrances, as well as limited in strict settlement. We believe that the duty which the landlord owes to his estate, or rather, which the estate owes to the whole country, is a prior duty to that which the owner of the estate can contract with any individual creditor. We believe that no man to whom the state has entrusted a certain portion of the soil of the country, "from which all must derive their support," has the power to assign that sacred trust to a number of mortgagees and other creditors, who have no interest in its improvement, or control over its management, and to leave himself without the means or the power of developing its utmost resources. "I think," says Dr. Longfield, in his evidence before the Land Commission, "that, in conscience, a man is not able to give a greater security for the payment of a debt than that sum which remains to him after discharging the obligations incident to the property and the creditor cannot complain if the state deprives the debtor of the entire of the property, and applies to the payment of the debt that portion of the property which the debtor, but for the debt, might have applied to his own uses; and applies the remainder to the discharge of those imperfect obligations, which cannot be trusted any longer to the discretion of a man who refuses to pay his debts. Then your principle is, that the duty to the state is antecedent to the duty to the creditor? YES." And such we believe would be the principle of every constitutional lawyer who would be asked his opinion on the subject. And some measures acknowledging and adopting this principle, in the case of Irish estates, we earnestly press upon the attention of parliament. The subject is thus mentioned in the Report of the Commissioners :

"It frequently happens that large estates in Ireland are held by the proprietors in strict limitation; and the pecuniary circumstances of the landed proprietors generally, arising in some cases out of family charges, and resulting, in others, from improvidence or carelessness, possibly, of former proprietors, disable many, even of the best disposed landlords, from improving their property, or encouraging improvement among their tenantry in the manner which would conduce at once to their own interest and the public advantage. Many of the evils incident to the occupation of land in Ireland may be attributed to this

cause.

"The removal of impediments, as far as it is possible to remove them, has formed the subject of inquiry and remark by the Committee in 1835, on public works, and various suggestions upon it have been offered to us in the course of our inquiry.

"In accordance with the recommendation of that Committee, we are of opinion that, for the permanent improvement of an estate, confining that expression to such operations as may properly be considered of an agricultural character, tenants for life and other persons under legal disability, should be empowered, subject to proper and efficient restrictions, to charge the inheritance to an amount not exceeding three years' income, for such improvements, being bound to repay the principal by instalments and to keep down the interest.

"In England and Ireland powers are frequently given by parliament to trustees and others to grant long leases, and even to compel sales of land for purposes considered to be of public interest, when the instruments under which the estate is held has given no such power. It must never be forgotten that an improved cultivation, with the consequent increase of produce from the soil, and of comfort to the occupier, are not matters of private or individual interest only, but are intimately connected with the preservation of public tranquillity and the general prosperity of the whole empire. It may also be observed that in the statute 1 and 2 Wm. IV. c. 33, commonly called the Public Works Act, and also in a still more recent statute, 1 and 2 Vict. c. 55, the principle of enabling those persons having partial interests to make charges for purposes beneficial to the estate, has been recognised. We hope, therefore, that an effective measure, founded upon the principles to which we have now referred, may soon become the law of the

land."

Most earnestly do we concur in the

hope which is here expressed. Both the measure which is here proposed, and that which we have ventured to suggest, for the compulsory sale of estates which are so heavily encumbered as to leave the proprietor no substantial interest, would require much careful and anxious deliberation. We know how the imperial legislature is, night after night, engaged with the affairs of Ireland; and we know that the demagogues who have arrogated the title and brought reproach upon the name of patriots, have never submitted to that house a single proposal adapted to the real interests of the country, however much they have engrossed its time in the consideration of means for suppressing the crime and outrage which their selfish agitation has called forth. Such men, and their measures and their adherents, should be utterly renounced by all good men. Avaricious cupidity, mor

bid vanity, frenzied ambition, and a frantic hatred of England, are the springs of their motives; and from these no good to the country can ever arise every measure coming from such a source must be adapted to the passions and to the apprehensions of the populace of the mere mob-"to split the ears of the groundlings." We entreat of the English and Scotch members, we implore of our Irish members who are opposed to the cause of anarchy and revolution, utterly to disregard these Irish agitators and their proposals; to assume that independence in their legislative capacity which distinguishes their private characters; and regardless of applause, and contemning censure, to look to the only motive which can weigh with Christian gentlemen-their duty; and in the permanent welfare of their country, to provide a lasting monument that they have vigorously and efficiently discharged it.

The

Now, among other topics which the revolutionists have latterly been forcing upon the Irish people, is a demand for what is termed tenant-right. tenant-right of Ulster is a term with which many of our readers are familiar, although, strange to say, there appears to be, even among its warmest advocates, no little discrepancy as to its signification. It is sometimes described as being a compensation paid to the outgoing tenant, by his succes

sor, for unexhausted improvements, and sometimes as being compensation paid for the mere right of occupancy. It has, however, no legal existenceit is a mere custom which prevails over the whole of Ulster ; and although disapproved of by very many landlords, it is yet tolerated by all, and sanctioned by some: debts are secured on it, and family charges are laid on it. It was thus explained, on a recent occasion, by Lord Londonderry, in the House of Lords— "According to the tenant-right of Ulster, if a tenant wished to sell his hold. ing, whether there was a lease or no lease, provided he brought a competent successor for the approbation of the landlord or agent, the sale took place. No inquiry was made as to the bargain between man and man. If the party purchasing was not, in the landlord's mind, eligible, he gave his veto, and another candidate might be produced. If no purchaser was brought forward, and the tenant desired to quit, or if no rent was paid, or misconduct occurred, the landlord, at a valuation open to the opinion of all upon the estate, gave full compensation for outlay, and got another tenant.'

As this custom is thus described by Lord Londonderry, it would clearly seem as if compensation for unexhausted improvements, and this alone, was the object of tenant-right. It is impossible, however, we must confess, to reconcile this view with the very high prices which are paid for this right, very frequently amounting, as they do, to ten pounds, and twenty, and even thirty pounds an acre. Lord George Hill says that he has known as much as forty years' purchase given for this right. Improvement, we fear, is not carried on to such an extent as this; and the evidence before the Land Commissioners went to shew, that the tenant-right was paid in many cases where no improvement whatsoever had been made, and that, in point of fact, improving tenants very seldom sold. It would seem, then, that however this custom may have originated, or whatever may be the abstract principle on which it rests, that the practice is to give a sum much larger than sufficient to pay for any improvements which may ordinarily have been effected, and this extra sum can only be regarded as so much paid for the occupancy of the farm. This payment, however, does

not in any way interfere with the rent of the land, for it is open to the landlord at any time to lay on such rent as he may deem reasonable. "The new tenant," says Mr. Handcock, Lord Lurgan's agent, and one of the most strenuous supporters of this custom, "has no actual security that the rent will not be raised; but in practice he ascertains from the agent, before he purchases, what the rent is likely to be, and the purchase is made subject to that rent."

Notwithstanding that the immediate pecuniary interests of the landlord are thus unaffected, and that he is in one respect a gainer, inasmuch as the usage is always to pay any arrears of rent which are due by the outgoing tenant, out of the sum which is coming to him for his good will of the farm, we yet cannot but feel that this practice of obtaining a perpetuity by possession is an injurious one. The only conceivable advantage that flows from it is this, that it secures to the tenant full remuneration for that to which he is most justly entitled, namely, his unexhausted improvements; but it does so in a most clumsy and artificial manner; and unless its exercise be most vigilantly watched, it must interfere most prejudicially with the rights of landlords. Nothing would be more natural than that the farmer, who would be willing to pay the highest amount to the outgoing tenant for his interest in the farm, would be the very last person whom a prudent landlord would be willing to allow upon his estate; and in no country except one in which the most cordial relation subsisted between landlord and tenant, could the landlord's right to rejection be exercised, and those conflicting interests be reconciled. It exhausts the capital of the tenant just at the time he requires it most, when he is entering upon his farm, or, perhaps, puts him upon borrowing at a high rate of interest from loan-funds, or otherwise, to meet this demand. It is, in this respect, more injurious to an estate than the custom of taking fines, for the latter may be expended on the property-the former is certain of being carried off it; and it diminishes that which it should be the great object to augment, namely, the capital of the tenant. Its advocates allege that it is its existence which has shielded Ulster from the

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