TEIs T ANT-RIGHT QUESTION. 27 



for, they could borrow money to improve 

 them, or rather to support themselves while 

 they were doing so. This is the very evil ex- 

 perienced by the small tenants of Ulster at 

 present. The system enables a poor man to 

 borrow money by granting an assignation of his 

 tenant-right, in order to purchase the good- 

 will of a farm, for which any sacrifice is willingly 

 made ; a transaction which places him among 

 the hands of money-jobbers, who extort from 

 him interest in many cases higher than the 

 landlord's rent. It is probable that money- 

 jobbers derive a higher revenue from the pro- 

 vince of Ulster than landlords, for they are 

 neither subject to tax or assessment for the 

 interest they possess in the soil. The interest 

 of the money-jobber is in a great measure 

 diametrically opposed to that of the landlord and 

 tenant. If, for instance, we suppose that a 

 Tipperary landlord lets a farm to a tenant at 

 205. per acre, and that the tenant borrows some 

 107. per acre from a money jobber, for which he 

 agrees to pay say ten per cent, of interest ; that 

 he invests this money in effecting similar im- 

 provements to those which have been effected 

 in Ulster ; the whole of the improvements in. 



