When, therefore, it is considered how many are the other contingencies,—such as the infraction of covenants, intolerably bad cultivation, subletting and illegal squatting, which not only entitle but render it incumbent on a landlord, from time to time, to free his estates of an undesirable tenant; and the extraordinary number of tenants on each estate, which of course must multiply the chances of collision, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that the annual rate of evictions for other causes than that of non-payment of rent, whether taken with reference to the number of occupiers, or to the extent of the area occupied,—in the one case amounting to 0.08 per cent per annum, in the other to one eviction per annum to every 30,000 acres, proves conclusively that the relations of the landlords of Ireland with their tenantry, arc by no means on that uncomfortable footing which is alleged, and that to describe Ireland as "a land of evictions" is to adopt an expression calculated to convey a false impression.[1]
But it is now objected that though the list of evic-
- ↑ Perhaps no better proof can be given of the general ignorance prevailing throughout Ireland on the subject of evictions than the avidity with which the returns for the notices of ejectment, commonly called Lord Belmore's returns, were seized upon by almost every newspaper in Ireland, as the basis on which to calculate the number of persons "annually driven forth to perish" by their cruel landlords.
Taking it for granted that a notice of ejectment and an eviction were identical circumstances, the total number of
