Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/32

 Ireland—the three large divisions of the United Kingdom.

In England, generally speaking, the tenants of the great landholders have no leases, because they prefer to be without leases. Lord Althorp told me, that when he came into possession of his property as Earl Spencer, he offered leases to all his tenants, and they all refused. The reason is clear. If he had granted, in 1836, leases for twenty-one years, those leases would have expired in 1857, and his successor might then have resolved on a fresh valuation, and have offered a renewal of the leases at a higher rent. I believe this feeling is common.

But while the English tenant farmers do not wish to have leases, they are very ready to vote with their landlords at an election for the county. No actual compulsion is requisite for this purpose; but I will not undertake to say to what degree the tenants may be influenced by personal attachment, by regard for an old family with which they have been long connected, by agreement with their landlord in political opinions, or by a wish to secure the favour of his agent. All I venture to assert is, that there is very little actual compulsion in the case; and I doubt whether the introduction of the ballot would make much practical difference.

In Scotland the case is different. I may be suspected of political heresy if I assert, what however I believe to be the fact, that the restriction of the franchise in Scotch counties to a limited number of landowners (about 3000 in all Scotland), from 1688 to 1831, tended to the rapid improvement of Scotch