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also; there are Southern counties in which there is no tenant-right, and where, nevertheless, there is good culture, and every outward sign of prosperity: there are Northern counties where, in spite of an existing custom of tenant-right, we find bad culture and every outward sign of poverty, backwardness, and want. Now, we confess that these are puzzling facts. Objecting strongly to the continued absence of legislation on the subject of tenants' improvements, we should be too glad to be borne out by facts in the argument that, unless you have tenant-compensation in some shape or form, you cannot have tenants prospering: but facts are stubborn things, they will not come at command; and here we tell and assure you that in parts of the South—in localities where no such custom exists—there is prosperity and success as great as any to be found in the most favoured districts in this province (Ulster.) What shall we say then? Have those who have for years been urging a system of tenant compensation for Ireland, from a sincere and earnest desire to contribute to her agricultural advancement (to say nothing of some who have urged it merely for political ends,)—have they all been contending for a mere idea? Let us try to get to the bottom of this difficulty. It is our belief (it may be an erroneous one, and we are open to conviction if we are wrong) that if the wish of the most extreme advocates of tenant right were granted to-morrow, and a system of fixity of tenure, with low rents, were introduced, the great bulk of that particular class of our farmers which stands in special need of improvement would remain virtually at a standstill. Well-to-do men, and men of taste and skill, might build houses and barns, and lay drains, and straighten fences, and make farm roads, fill hollows, sub-soil the land and all the rest of it; but what of the multitude which is not well-to-do—which, notwithstanding the possession of considerable experience, after a fashion, lacks what we should call skill—the skill of the latter end of the 19th century—and which has had little or no opportunity for cultivating taste? What of the men who, doing their very best most industriously, would only, and could only, erect unsightly houses and offices—monuments of industrious energy, if you like, but monuments of ugliness and unfitness. And, putting taste and even comfort out of the question, and proceeding to bare utility, what of the men whose notions of draining were entirely erroneous, and who, with the utmost of willing hard labour, could only succeed in making "shores" which would throw up boils of wet in place of drying the land—and many a good farmer knows what a trouble and expense it is to have to take up badly constructed "shores" in order to lay proper ones? What of the men who have no notion of the most approved systems of rotations of crops;
