Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/49

46 for a change in the law to improve their farms, but have trusted to the chance of their landlord's leniency, or to the safeguard which agrarian intimidation has hitherto afforded?

Then, if this be so, to agrarian intimidation they will still look for the preservation of that interest in their holdings, to which they feel by all principles of natural justice they have a right, and which, practically, they for the most part do possess; and security for life and property—the sine guâ non of social regeneration—will be hopeless of attainment in Ireland.

On these grounds it appears to me indispensable that any legal title which may be given to tenants to compensation for improvements, must have a retrospective operation.

Another point of almost equal importance in my view (but which seems to have been equally overlooked in the recommendation of the Devon Commission) is, that the apathy, indifference, or short-sighted niggardliness of the landlord shall not be permitted to prevent real improvements from being executed by the tenant. The consent of the landowner, therefore, must not be made a necessary condition to the establishment of a claim to compensation. It can hardly be doubted that, in a large proportion of cases, the reply of the landlord to any notice from a yearly tenant that he intended to make some improvement for which he expected