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it to me at the end of the time with the specified improvements upon it." What an excellent bargain for a twelve-acre farmer, even if he built the best of houses, and made the most perfect drains, and the trimmest of fences.
The English landlord charges for similar land at the present day 30s per acre and upwards; having first made the improvements in a much more durable and skilful way at his own cost. We think the English landlord is the most business-like of the two. What he does in drains, fences, or buildings, will last for a century or more. The Irish tenant of each generation in some of our backward districts shows his taste for improvement best, by destroying the improvements of his predecessor: pulling down the old cabin and erecting a better (to be pulled down in its turn by his son who will build a two-storey house), levelling the fences made with much toil, "hoking" up with difficulty the old shallow stone drains and making deeper ones. But it often puzzles us to discover the grounds on which tenants of this class found their claim for compensation. Heartily as we can sympathise with the tenant, who with a farm already let at its full value, is expected to make thereon drains, buildings, and all the rest of it, without any security assuring him the enjoyment of these until he has recouped himself, and who at his own risk carries out these works in a skilful and efficient manner we confess that we cannot extend our commiseration to men whose improvements (being, perhaps to begin with, no improvements at all,) have been effected under a continuous system of leases with rents estimated in accordance with the stipulated work to be done ever since the land was a wilderness. In such cases we reserve our pity rather for the landlord, who, having in the course of 31 years foregone on a farm of say 12 acres an aggregate sum of about £300 of rent, finds himself saddled at the end of that time with a number of ungainly fences—many of them superfluous; some shallow drains which, from having to be "extracted" before new ones can be made are worse than none; and a range of unsightly buildings.
And to crown all, he would be told that the tenant whose advantageous lease had just dropped, had a right to compensation for all these valuable labours.
Those who are extensively acquainted with the modern history of Tenant Bight in Ulster will, we are sure, admit that this is not an overdrawn picture of the too common defects of the system.
While contemplating our sketch we feel sorely tempted to use the words of Lord Palmerston, and say, "what some call Tenant Right is too often Landlord Wrong!" But on further reflection we feel we must admit that in the past there have been faults on
