Page:The Irish problem (Hibernicus).djvu/9

5 ." Neither landlord nor tenant must be suffered to disfigure the face of the country with cabins or cottages needlessly squalid, if the law can do ought to prevent it; neither landlord nor tenant must be suffered to allow wet, and weeds, and bad cropping to curtail the generous yield which a properly cultured soil would produce, if it is possible to make an enactment which shall ensure good farming.

It will be said that we here point to a sort of ideal despotism by which the law is to make every body good and happy in spite of themselves.

Nothing of the sort. We only propose that the channel of legislation should be turned into such a direction that each and all—landlords and tenants—will find it to their decided advantage to keep pace with the progress of civilisation around them, and to their decided disadvantage not to do so.

And how can this be effected? We have already observed that the landlord has no stimulus in the shape of self-interest, to make it worth his while to devote himself to property-management as a real mercantile business, which if he manages badly, it will be so much the worse for him, and if he manage well, it will be so much the better for him. The improving landlord who endeavours, but endeavours in vain, till he gives it up in despair, to get his farms to be something like Belgian farms, has at least one consolation if he fails. He gets his rents in full, all the same. Even this amiable individual requires another goad to stimulate him to still greater exertions. Even over his head there must be held the fear of the periodical government valuation which, if his farms fall back in productiveness, must visit him with a depreciation in his rental. He will then see that the backward farmer, by gentle means if possible, or if these fail, by sterner ones, must be made to advance, or to give place to another. And that the backward farmer may not have it to say that he had no stimulus, the same periodical valuation which raises or lowers the rental of the landlord, must give the tenant full credit for all improvements of proved value made by him with his landlord's consent, on or in the soil. And safeguards must be given against vexatious refusals on the part of the landlord or tenant, to make or to acquiesce in the making of such necessary improvements as shall fall to the part of either of them to effect.

The present idea of Ulster Tenant Right amongst the farming class appears to be that a farmer should be irremovable so long as he pays his rent, and that he should have the right to sell his interest to the highest bidder. This idea may suit the private interests of the farmers themselves well enough; but we—while ready to forego for the public good much landlord prerogative—