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running. But as the condition of all the holders is unchanged, save for the better since the time when the last leases began to expire, we may assume that they have all been virtually under a system of security of tenure since the land was first redeemed from its state of wilderness. It will surely then be interesting to see what have been the economic results of this security of tenure, and whether it has established a race of model farmers. Certainly some of the farms and farm steadings in question are inmost pleasing to behold, the houses neat and clean, the yard« tidy, the fences very tolerably trim, the 'fields fairly farmed. But others again, under exactly the same conditions, are in nearly every respect the reverse. We have recently visited. same of the holdings of the latter class; and to say nothing of the more purely agicultural defects, have felt do a state of positive perplexity when striving to devise some means by which the long Irish rows of deformed habitations thereon could be converted into civilized dwellings, rather than be -totally demolished.
Let us return for a while to our starting point, the lease of 1700, and examine some of its terms. They were such as follows:—That the lessee should "erect, or cause to be erected 'On the most convenient place on the premises a large dwelling house of good oak timber, the walls of stone and lime, at least 50 feet long and 14 high; and sufficiently enclose with ditch, and quickset a plantation acre of land adjoining to said house, and should sufficiently plant the same with good fruit trees." Then a proviso that the lessee should preserve all the timber growing then or thereafter on the land; uphold and maintain the buildings in tenantable repair, and at the expiration of the demise should "so 80 yield up and leave the same." Also that he should "scour and fence in the meares and bounds of the premises." And that he should "not at any time, alien, sell, or convey his estate or interest in the premises or any part thereof, without the special license of the lessor in writing."
Now, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, there is not even a tradition of such a house as the one stipulated for having 'ever been built. There is, however, the most palpable evidence that the sturdy yeoman in question, if he did not do his part to improve the face of the country, according to the intention of the Royal scheme, commenced even at that early era to lay the foundation of that system of independence of landlords and their rights which has now become so much in vogue.
For in the face of the stipulation not to assign without consent an writing, we find the land, at the expiration of this first lease, in the hands of forty sub-tenants. It is true that on the back of the lease there is a memorandum of assignment; but not only is this
