Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/99

Rh that a great deal of emigration from Ireland has been going on. "Yes," he replies, "but I do not think that the emigration is much caused by the landlord and tenant question." Again he is asked if good tenants have not been driven away from the country by the supposed insecurity of the tenure. He answers, "In some instances an active man may have been prevented from investing his capital in Ireland on that account, but I do not think that class form a large proportion of the emigrants as yet," and a little further on he calculates the emigrants who belong to the tenant-farmer class as amounting to about four out of every 100 persons who quit Ireland, the great bulk of the exodus being composed of small tradesmen, artizans, and labourers.

Happily, the case admits of even closer proof. In the denunciatory addresses to which I have referred, the tenant of Ulster is justly indicated as occupying an exceptionally good position, and many have declared they would be satisfied if the tenantry of the south could obtain, under an Act of Parliament, one-tenth of the security accorded by custom to the tenantry of Ulster. If, therefore, the oppression and legalized injustice which is supposed to desolate the homesteads of the south, is absent from the north, it would be natural to imagine that the extinction of tenancies in Ulster would have been infinitesimal; but as a matter of fact the havoc amongst the small farmers