anon

“ We do not agree with those who say that legal security is not needed, for that landlords are really to be trusted, whatever agitators may say. If we were to lend a hundred pounds to our dearest friend we should like to have his " handwriting" for it; "in case of accident." We must be business-like even with those whom we trust; and it is very unbusiness-like for one man to lay out, or to be expected to lay out, time and labour in the improvement of another man's land without even "the stroke of a pen" to secure to him or his heirs the value of what he has done. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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 ”

“ And that Sovereign came and dwelt among the people of the island; and landlords came and dwelt on their estates, and, with their wives, and their sons, and their daughters—following their sovereign's example—visited the poor, considered their condition, worked for their amelioration! Heirs to landed property were no longer left to amuse themselves, or employ themselves as best they might, till the course of nature should chance to place them in their father's shoes ”

“ But we cannot profess to be architects. The nine tailors of Tooley St, thought themselves great architects after their fashion, and everybody laughs at them to this day. So we must be very careful how we dream and how we plan—nay, we must remember that it is not we who have to build the house, we only have to live in it whether it be well or ill constructed. ”

“ In many parts of the island, there were substantial farmers—men of capital and skill, and the absence of landlord or agent mattered little to them. They would gladly have welcomed them as friends, and looked up to them moreover with the respect tor which their position entitled them, but were to a great extent independent of any aid they could afford as guides or directors. They held their tenements from year to year, it is true; but they improved them as occasion and good husbandry demanded, without security, certainly, and with the chance of having their rent raised for their pains ”

“ There is good farming in the North, there is good farming in the South; there is bad farming and squalid poverty in^ the South, there is bad farming and squalid poverty in the North 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It appeared, however, to most thinkers that a great many were hopeless because it was the custom to be hopeless; and that many a man who might have put his shoulder to the wheel for himself did not, because other people persuaded him that it was no use, and that he ought to wait for something which was never going to come. ”

“ 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 ”