Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/290

Rh same degree and in the same sense as the converse is now unfair to the tenant.

Under the existing statute, if a yearly occupier of a farm expends £500 in the erection of a house, the law presumes the building to belong to the owner of the soil, and he might claim possession the day after it was built. For the law to declare its value to be the property of the tenant as long as that value endures would be even a less extravagant presumption. It was never contemplated, however, that a naked presumption of this kind should regulate the ultimate arrangement; but as, in the absence of any specific agreement on the subject, it was necessary to attribute the property to some one, it was naturally assigned to the person with whose estate it had become irrevocably incorporated, in the expectation that the original presumption created by the law would be expressly confirmed, modified, or reversed by a subsequent agreement framed in accordance with the interests of the contracting parties. Unhappily, in Ireland this expectation has been frustrated. Those very persons to whom the unmitigated application of this legal presumption would be most injurious, have been too careless,—too confiding,—too dependant—to adopt the countervailing precautions which, in other countries, the prudence of mankind has rendered universal. As a consequence, the untempered presumption of the law acts occasionally in Ireland with a severity it was never intended should attach to it. Let us then change that presumption, and impose upon