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10 of the tenant without consulting the landlord; while at the same time due provision should be made against unreasonable objections to reasonable improvement from either side. Let but all this be secured; together with a wholesome modification of the law of eviction, and we shall gradually glide into such a fixity of tenure as shall reward real worth, while affording no shelter to the undeserving—a fixity of tenure which will fulfil the conditions of the Plantation of Ulster with an entirety which any mere plan of stereotyping, as it were, the state of things as^ they now exis^ would utterly and-signally fail to effect.

ABOUT LEASES

The aim of James L when he devised his "Plantation Scheme," was to give encouragement to men who were willing and able to transform the wilderness of Ulster into a garden. Many such men appeared, and thanks to the wisdom of the Monarch, thousands of our northern acres are now rich with fertility. But in spite of the Monarch's wisdom, other thousands of those acres are still in a state of little better than barrenness; and on many a hillside, squalidity and real or apparent penury reign supreme.^ And this is due to the too frequent departure from the spirit of the scheme in question.

Now, by whom was this departure made? Some will reply—"By the landlords, by a denial on their part of that security which was prescribed by the Sovereign, and which was requisite for the development of the best energies of the tenant."

Let us appeal to unimpeachable facts in order that it may be seen how far this allegation can hold good. We shall confine ourselves to a case within our own direct cognizance. We prefer not to deal in generalities, and will leave it to others to say whether our conclusions are borne out by their own experience.

We have before us a lease granted in the reign of William III., in the year 1700, demising two townlands, containing about 500 acres, to a single individual for the term of three lives, at a rent of £16 per annum. This lease dropped in the year 1750 when the lands in question appear parcelled out amongst about forty holders, who in their turn receive leases for three lives more, or thirty-one to forty-one years, at about 5s per acre. And we have before us a further budget of leases which, at about £1 per acre, bring all these holdings down to the present generation. Some have fallen in, and have not been renewed j others are still 