(2) The rentals of Ireland are steadily following the improvements of the tenants. Some landlords suffer a considerable margin to exist between the actual value and the rent paid, while others lose no opportunity of forcing the rents to the highest amount that circumstances permit.

(3) This state of things is one absolutely and entirely new. The granting of leases was the general custom in the last century, and continued for some time into this.

(4) The agriculturists of Ireland never had such a feeble and precarious hold upon the land they cultivate as they have now. It appears certain that this precariousness of tenure has no parallel or equal in the world. It is peculiar to Ireland, and new even there.

(5) It is, however, an object which the all but unanimous efforts of the landlords are directed to bring about. It is an object which they avowedly pursue both for their own interests and the interests, as they allege, of agricultural improvement.

(6) They have by their persevering and combined efforts brought this precariousness of tenure very nearly to a degree of completeness.

(7) Their control over their tenants is practically absolute. They can and do enact bye-laws on their

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estates which place the tenant for practical purposes in a state of serfdom. By their rules marriage has been known to be forbidden without the licence of the agent; while one of the most general of these bye-laws is that which forbids the harbouring of any, except the tenant's immediate family, in his house.1

(8) These powers are exercised by means of a summary ejectment code which is unknown to the English law, and gives extraordinary facilities of ejectment to the Irish landlord.

(9) And these powers, conferred by the law, are increased by skill in the management of estates. A tenancy from year to year is reduced to an actual

1 "I could tell of another estate on which the landlord's agent has laid down the rule that under no circumstances shall two families be permitted to live in the same house." "An aged widow invited her daughter, who had lost her husband, to take share of her house. For this crime, although occupying a respectable position, the mother of a Roman Catholic priest, she is actually evicted from a farm where she had lived for nearly fifty years."-Plea for the Celtic Race, p. 27, by Isaac Butt. Mr. Butt vouches for this on his own personal knowledge.

"The tenancy is determinable by a month's notice or the death of the tenant, and further, according to some of their rules and conditions, the tenant cannot marry or procure the marriage of his son or daughter without the landlord's or the agent's permission. Moreover, he cannot entertain, even for a night, not merely the stranger who asks his hospitality, but even his nearest relative and friend." Quoted by Mr. Butt, loco citato, from an address delivered before the Legal and Historical Society, by their president, Mr. C. Molloy. The story of the "homeless boy," which illustrates the same system, is too long for a note, and is placed in Appendix A.

tenancy at will by the contrivance of an annual notice to quit, or by an agreement binding the tenant under a heavy penalty to give up possession whenever he is asked.1 It is stated that a receipt for rent on some estates is never given without a printed notice to quit on the back of it.2

I take this statement from Mr. Butt, who it may be presumed knows the law on this matter ("The Irish People and the Irish Land," p. 244).

Mr. Thos. de Moleyns, Q.C., in his work. "The Landowner's and Agent's Practical Guide," remarks :-"The Sheriff may execute any habere or civil bill decree for possession, without removing any undertenant or occupier who shall at the time of such execution sign with his name or mark an attornment or acknowledgment of title according to forms Nos. 6 or 7 in the Schedule A." (This is the pith of the form referred to: We, whose names are hereunder subscribed, hereby acknowledge that we respectively occupy the lands by the licence and at the will of the said A. B. . . . and that we will when required by the said A. B deliver up to the said A. B. the possession of the said lands, &c. &c.) "The 71st Section of the Landlord and Tenant Act now regulates the conditions, which appear to be rather arbitrary, of redemption in both Courts. The Court is to hear the application and give such relief in a summary way as a Court of Equity might have formerly done, and may award restitution to the tenant or refuse his application. It is thus left to the discretion of the Judge or Chairman to impose such terms as he may think reasonable."

2 I have been told this by most respectable persons who knew it to be a fact, Lord Dufferin says: "To serve an ejectment is very often the only way of inducing a dilatory tenant to pay up an arrear of rent; in which case it bears the same relation to an eviction as a lawyer's letter to an action at law. On my own estate, dozens of ejectments have been served for one eviction that has taken place, and the more indulgent the landlord, the more disposed will some of his tenants be to wait for this proof of his patience being exhausted,”—an observation which testifies to a peculiar state of things, and hardly agrees with the very good understanding which Lord Dufferin declares elsewhere to exist between landlords and their tenants.

(10) It is not pretended that good landlords do not exist, who take an enlarged view of their duties, and display a wise generosity in their dealings with their tenants; but it is an accepted principle in politics not to trust the public welfare to the exceptional virtue of individuals. Injustice, oppression, and bad government could not exist if this were safe to do. Even in the crucial case of slavery it is unquestionable that good masters were to be found whose conscience was a law unto themselves. The Southern planters were not all Legrees; far from it. But the system admitted of Legrees, and was condemned by all good men in consequence. Landlordism in Ireland presents on a diminished scale a parallel condition of things. One wicked unscrupulous landlord can work a mischief which ten good ones would not suffice to counteract, even if there were always ten good ones to neutralize one bad one, which would be a rather extravagant supposition. The system gives powers which, human nature being what it is, are sure to be abused by a certain number at any given moment; and, as no one who lives under it can have any guarantee that he will not be subject to one of them, the uneasiness and distrust are universal.

Such in rude outline are the chief heads of tenantwrong in Ireland. It must, I think, be admitted

that, however such a state of affairs is to be explained, or however it has been brought to pass, it is one suggestive of grave and even of anxious thought. Everybody can judge for himself whether uncertainty, hopeless insecurity concerning the future, is not one of the most painful and paralysing sentiments which can afflict the mind. In this case it is a sentiment which is shared by the great bulk of those who live by labour-by those who are employed upon the chief industry of the country. Any diminution of enterprise or of production appears possible or probable under such a system. To live always under the favour or caprice of an agent or landlord, who can terminate your trade and industry whenever he thinks fit, can lead but to one result, -the sullen discontent and apathy of the persons so situated.

We now come to the interpretation to be put upon these facts by the advocates of the landlords and tenants respectively.

The former, after they have referred to the lofty argument of their right to do as they like with their own, plead that they have been driven into adopting the present system by considerations of public duty no less than of private interest. Nothing less stern than the measures they now adopt can save Ireland from becoming a pauper