TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' WORK. 19 



as a business, subject to similar risks and conditions 

 as any other business, and from which if a man can 

 make a living whilst in it, and when he leaves it 

 can carry away something more than he began with, 

 he may be well satisfied. They think that any 

 improvement in their farms gives them a claim to 

 indefinite consideration. It may have repaid them 

 ten times over, but that goes for nothing, and they 

 lose far greater profits to themselves, for fear their 

 landlords might gain by a higher rent even years 

 after. Nothing can better show their feeling than 

 the fact that a twenty -one years' lease is thought 

 hardly worth having. The instances of landlords 

 unduly taking advantage of a tenant's improvements 

 are at least as rare as in England or Scotland, and 

 there is nothing but these silly expectations and 

 the suggestions of tenant-right agitators to hinder 

 any prudent tenant from farming well. 



Good tenants are just as valuable to Irish as to 

 English or Scotch landlords, and their value is at 

 least equally felt. Such tenants have no difficulty 

 in making fair agreements both as to rents and im- 

 provements. Among the bad tenants there are 

 some as thorough rogues and schemers as can be 

 found in the three kingdoms; yet when one of these 

 is got rid of, just the same outcry is raised by 

 tenant-right advocates as if Virtue herself was 

 suffering. 



In judging of the state of Ireland, I think very 



