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sons will not be trained, and will not improve, how long is forbearance to last?
Perhaps what we have written may be rather startling to some Ulster minds accustomed to what is, if not an actual, yet a virtual fixity of tenure. We shall be asked if we really and seriously propose that a man should receive notice to quit when he has paid his rent regularly for years, merely because he chooses to be slovenly in his farm, in his house, and in his person.
To this we reply that there is too great a tendency now-a-days to be very sentimental in behalf of certain classes, and to reserve all our animadversion for less favoured sections of the community. The present cry is all against bad landlords. Well, hit 'em hard, these bad landlords, so long as you are just and don't class good ones amongst them, or so long as you don't call a man a bad one who is really not so. But be still further just; and if you are down upon the bad landlords, pray be down upon the bad tenants as well If you make it your boast that you are patriotic Irishmen, show your zeal for your country by an impartial disapproval of all who would retard its advancement, whether they be landlords or tenants; and don't seek to perpetuate evils by agitating for leases or any other form of security for any but those who have shown some sign that they are likely to turn them to good account.
But it has been already remarked that slovenliness and bad farming are the misfortune rather than the fault of those of our fellow-countrymen whose name is unhappily "legion." Would We then visit upon them their misfortune? By no means. But we would make it their interest to do their utmost to rid themselves of this particular misfortune, by supplying them with the greatest possible stimulus to improve. We who pen these lines are surrounded by many such families. Right gladly would we feel assured that these families would remain in the houses of their forefathers till the third and fourth generation. But we should also like to see legislation so directed that they would have to win this boon by deserving it! We are not of those who Would impetuously uproot either landlord or tenant; but we are of the opinion that the Legislature should not leave a stone unturned to induce both landlords and tenants, by every motive of self-interest, and by every fear of the consequences of neglect—to keep pace with the 19th century. It is of the tenant, and not of the landlord that we are now speaking. Of the bad tenant therefore we say that we would give him no lease, lest he should snap his fingers in the face of his landlord and the community at large, and remain a bad one. But what of the good tenants? We have already said that for them we do not consider a lease a
