50 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



the security may induce the tenant to farm better, 

 and a higher rent be the result at the end of his term. 



And, as if to cut away this one motive, a higher 

 rent at the end of the term is the very thing tenant- 

 right agitators most object to. 



The truth, however, is, that the improvement of 

 an estate, so far as it depends on the tenant, is not 

 the result of a lease or no lease ; but of the character 

 of the landlord, and those who represent him. 



I can show an estate with very few leases, I will 

 venture to say> though I do not know Lord Ports- 

 mouth's estate, just as highly improved as it, and 

 with the great majority of the tenants flourishing in 

 all ways ; and, which is the surest test, yearly pro- 

 ducing sums of money for the marriage of their sons 

 and daughters that astonish me, well as I know their 

 circumstances. 



After more than twenty years' work, I shall in 

 two or three years more have finished the drainage of 

 the whole, which I and not the tenants have done. 

 There is hardly a good building I have not helped 

 to build; and as soon as the outlay for draining 

 is over, I mean to take the buildings in hand, and 

 do all of them wholly myself, instead of leaving them 

 to the tenants to do partly. It is the simple matter 

 of fact that, every year that passes, the treatment of 

 the land in Ireland is improving, and the tenants as 

 a class are making more money. Many of those who 

 talk loudest about tenant-right are men in the neigh- 



