Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/205

 had been made for the Kilkee improvements by an equitable law of landlord and tenant, a vast amount of crime and of the consequences of crime might have been avoided.

Having had occasion to examine somewhat minutely the English law of landlord and tenant, I will quote here a portion of what I have said elsewhere on that subject:—

"'The English law of landlord and tenant having during the last six hundred years been made by the landlords, may be expected to favour the landlords rather than the tenants. The operation of the law of landlord and tenant is partly seen in the numerous cases in the law reports where the tenant is a man of some capital, and can make a fight in the courts of law against the landlord. But another picture is presented in the numerous cases where the law can be, and has been made an instrument of grinding oppression in the hands of those who have become the landlords of the cottages and small houses inhabited by the working men, whether farm labourers in the country or artificers in the towns. But though the oppression in these cases is very grievous, it is mercy compared to that which the English law of landlord and tenant has enabled those who have got possession of land in Ireland to apply to tenants completely at their mercy.'"

In the case of Ireland the Encumbered Estates Act—though intended to substitute for landlords, without capital for improvement, a better class of landlords— showed the difficulty of the question