Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/51

48 arbitration at quarter or petty session" (p. 187). The principle to regulate the amount should be, in the words of C. A. Walker, Esq., landed proprietor and deputy-lieutenant of the same county, "the fair residue of the value of every improvement which the tenant (or his predecessors within some limited antecedent period) had effected on his holding at his own cost."

It would not appear to be a very difficult matter to estimate this, by taking first the letting value of the land in the absence of these improvements, and deducting this from the present improved value. The remainder would be the portion fairly claimable by the tenant, for which, if forced to quit, he should be paid at a fixed number of years' purchase.

"I feel perfectly convinced," says Mr. Walker, "that if this principle were enforced by law, agrarian outrages would cease, and all the supposed good effects the advocates of fixity of tenure and a maximum of rent now seek for, would be secured. It would become a matter of comparative indifference whether there were leases or not; and the increased profit which the tenant would derive from the secure outlay of his capital in the improvement of the land, bringing with it an increased produce, would raise the estate and condition of both landlord and tenant. I have very extensively conversed with farmers upon the subject, and without a single exception they agree that it would settle the ques-