132 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



version from its owners, let it do so honestly by pay- 

 ing for it, as has been done in other cases. Even 

 the Ulster tenants paid for their tenant-right. The 

 landowner may be able to show that he let the farm 

 to the tenant himself without any such rights; in 

 many cases by lease. In my own case about three- 

 fifths of my tenants hold by lease, and the rest only 

 have not leases, because having been promised their 

 farms for their lives at the old rent, and my word 

 always kept to them, they prefer the benefit of the 

 promise to a new bargain and lease. A great number 

 of landlords have spent largely some more, some 

 less upon their land, and so have the same rights 

 that I have. Why are landlords to be deprived of 

 what is theirs honestly ? All this applies to every 

 plan of free sale no less than to Ulster tenant-right. 



Others propose to confiscate the land itself, paying 

 for it twenty years' purchase of the Government 

 valuation already mentioned (which is about half the 

 present true letting-value), and sinking the value of 

 the reversion. Their plan is, by refusing rents, and 

 making it hard for owners to get them paid, further 

 to beat down the value. The Government is to have 

 the privilege of paying the purchase -money and 

 getting back from the tenant what it can of it by 

 instalments. 



Let it be added further, to show the small weight 

 of the tenant party, that the whole population of 

 Ireland is less than five millions and a half. In 1871 



