Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/48

45 improvements only, leaving past claims unsatisfied, must fail to conciliate to the support of the law the existing race of tenants, or induce them to apply their industry and capital henceforward to the work .of improvement. They will not believe in promises of payment for improvements they may hereafter make, if their claim be refused for such as they have already made. Justice would seem to require the one no less than the other.

Take for example the case related by the Rev. Malachi Duggan, of Clare, where "a poor man named Crotty built a nice dwelling-house." His landlord, before long, "taking a fancy to the house, which was a pretty thing, paved all round, and with back offices," "picked a quarrel with the man, and threw him out on the highway, where himself and his wife shortly died," (p. 176, Digest). If that poor fellow were alive, and in the occupation of his little holding, is he to be told, "you must quit and give up the nice house you have built; but if you like to build another, the law shall give you a lien upon it?"

Or take the cases related by Mr. Robert M'Crea, of the county of Tyrone, as within his knowledge (p. 174), in which the rental of small farms has been doubled "in consequence of a house being built by the tenant himself, without a stick, stock, stone, or slate having been got from the landlord." Are tenants under such circumstances to be left without protection, because they have not waited