Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/217

Rh Such barren speculations cannot alter the fact that at present the owner of landed property in Ireland holds it in exactly the same sense, and under the same conditions, as the owner of property in England.* He can sell his interest in it, he can let it,


 * "Men are ever readyenough to believe that their misfortunes are caused by others rather than by themselves ; and the long-cherished belief in the existence of a grievance is always hard to dispel. The Irish tenantry have been taught to believe that their position as to their legal rights is far worse than that of the tenant class in Englaud ; that the law which in England protects, in Ireland oppresses, the tenant ; that while in England he is safe from capricious eviction, in Ireland he is daily liable to it ; that whilst the Irish landlord is a rack-renting tyrant, his English brother is a mild, humane, disinterested, easy-going man, satisfied with a very moderate rent for his land, and ever burning with anxiety to build barns, byres, and dwelling-houses, at his own expense, and solely for the benefit of his much-loved tenant. Now no one, knowing the two countries, requires to be told that these representations are at least very highly coloured. It is well known that, though the landlord in England may build the farmhouses and offices in the first instance, and may sometimes (according to the custom of the district where his property lies) aid in keeping them in repair, while in Ireland the landlord has hitherto usually left these things to be done by the tenant, yet the English proprietor receives an ample equivalent in the much higher rent that his farms produce than that at which laud of the same intrinsic value is generally let in Ireland. Nothing can be more fallacious than the idea that the power of evicting an improving tenant in Ireland is greater than it is in Englaud, or that the English tenant class are in practice perfectly free frcm the capricious exercise of it by their landlords. A very cursory reference to the evidence taken before the Agricultural Customs Committee of the IIouso of Commons in ISIS will suffice to show that tenants* grievances are not peculiar to Ireland."

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