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assert most decidedly our opinion that such an idea does not tend to the best interests of the community at large.
The farmer ought to be removable by his landlord for improper cultivation, aye and for persistence in maintaining a piggish habitation, (cases of which a government official should be the judge if appeal was demanded). And, in order to restore our patchwork holdings to proper shapes and sizes, so that they may be farmed in accordance with the laws of economy, the landlord should have the selection of the successor to a tenant about to leave. As for sales to the highest bidder—that may be all very well amongst a certain class who know what they are about; but we have already alluded in the columns of the Tyrone Constitution to the influences of whiskey and "sweeteners" in transactions of this nature! We beg of the many farmers in favoured and wealthy districts, and of some newspaper writers, whose experience is for the most part confined to the trim farms in the neighbourhood of our towns, to weigh well our very earnest words, written, we honestly declare, in the interest of no particular class, and we heartily trust under the influence of no particular prejudice; and we hope to unite all our readers, in the name and for the sake of Irish progress, in the opinion we have already expressed that the land legislature of the future ought to be based upon the principle "that the bad landlord and the bad tenant should be compelled by law, to do that which the good ones would naturally do from a sense of duty and of their own real advantage."
II.
ABOUT LEASES
A great deal has been lately said on the subject of leases, and more particularly about 31 years leases. We are unable to see what magic there is in the precise term of 31, but we have heard it so often named in certain quarters, that we begin to suspect it is a "shibboleth." We believe that a certain State official, having to deal with certain State lands once upon a time, gave 31 years leases to all the tenants thereon, who have thriven ever since. Hence has arisen a tradition amongst public men groping for light on the "Irish Difficulty," that not only is there luck in odd members, but that there is some special charm in the number of thirty-one.
Let us however make a present of this odd year to its advocates, and join issue with them on the question, notwithstanding the success of the experiment in question, whether a lease is the one and sole panacea for the Irish Farmer's ills.
