Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/263

Rh The most notable plan is one lately promulgated by Mr. Butt, a gentleman of eminence in his profession. As his plan is typical of a large series of others, it may be well to examine it. It is embodied in the form of a projected Act of Parliament, which declares that after the said Act every tenant who chooses to claim its protection shall be entitled to a lease of 63 years at a rent one-third below the full or competition value. Thus, by a single stroke of the pen, the whole of the landed property of Ireland is to be withdrawn from the control and enjoyment of those who have either purchased or inherited it, and is to remain for two entire generations at the disposal of the 540,000 persons who may happen at the time of the passing of the Act to be in the occupation of its several sub-divisions. This, too, without reference to their individual qualifications, and in the teeth of the condemnation passed by the tenants' best friends on even a 21 years' lease, if granted for a holding of less than 15 acres, within which category more than one-third of the forms of Ireland still remain.

Let us now look more narrowly into the operation of this plan, and, as every Irishman will probably judge of it as it affects himself, let me be excused for taking the same narrow view. I possess a strip of some three or four hundred acres, bordering the Lough of Belfast, peculiarly suitable for villas. I have been offered from 15l. to 20l. an acre for a portion of this land (most of which I have inherited from an ancestor who made his fortune as a merchant, and part of which I have recently purchased with