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periods. But we would still claim for the landlord the right to stipulate for those improvements to his property in which his forefathers, and his tenants and their forefathers, have tried their hands and in too many cases failed. We would seek for no evictions save" for non-payment of rent, or for failure or refusal to carry out 'reasonable stipulations of the above nature; and lest such should at any time be considered unreasonable, we would submit them gladly to the opinion of some government official appointed for that purpose.
And whatever improvements were made at the tenant's cost, if he had not a set-off in the rent, we would leave to his credit, claiming the same terms for improvements made by the landlord.
It is our belief that such an arrangement alone would meet the real intention of the Plantation of Ulster.
To the system of terminable leases, as we have already stated, we would not return. A bad tenant slips through a lease. For a good tenant it is, we maintain, an insufficient reward; if at the present usually prevailing rental (about £1 per acre) the bulk of future improvements, supposing that they are to be really improvements, devolves upon him. And we have lively recollections, which make us inimical to leases, of an aged relative of our own having been obliged a short time before her death to quit a house in which she had spent most of her life, because her lease had expired, and the house was sold over her head. We Irish love the prospect of handing down to our heirs that which was the home of our fathers before us, whether we be high or low; and while holding that wilful neglect or mismanagement deserves to be visited, in any class, with the natural penalties, we here put in a plea in favour of security foe the well deserving. And since, in the foregoing remarks, we have spoken much of the shortcomings of the slovenly and unskilled amongst a tenantry which we suppose we may take as a fair sample of many Irish tenantries, we gladly bear witness to the willingness which exists amongst many of these to improve, if only they can be shown the way. And at the same time we gladly admit that these slovenly and unskilled ones form but a section of the whole. But as with individual estates, so it will be with Ireland. And it should not be suffered, if good laws or good landlordism can prevent it, that even a section of Ireland should be left to lag in arrear of the age!
Believing, for our own part, that in the past, the security of leases has in reality been more general than some would lead us to suppose; we also hold that this form of security has proved a failure so far as regards the general advance of the country. For the future development of our agricultural resources we look
