170 



A LIFE >S WORK IN IRELAND. 



his interest again for whatever it would fetch, sub- 

 mitting to the loss. Any arrears of rent that he might 

 have accumulated in his turn were stopped out of 

 the money that was payable to Mm, and thus he 

 often became a pauper, or near it. The immense 

 effect of bad or good years upon Tenant-right has never 

 been duly observed. It is much greater than upon 

 tenants holding in the common way. Further, Tenant- 

 right is a chattel. It may be sold by a creditor for 

 debt, and it may be left by will or settled independ- 

 ently of the farm itself. Sales by creditors are 

 common, they are just the same as ejectments in 

 effect. Tenant-right, too, is left often to wife and 

 younger children as a provision, and so has to be paid 

 over again by the son who gets the farm, thus pump- 

 ing the farm dry of capital every generation, at the 

 very time when a young, energetic man enters on it, 

 who could do much good if he had the capital. 

 Tenant-right rested wholly upon custom ; the cus- 

 tom is said to vary in nearly every county in Ulster. 

 It had no legal authority, but the customs were so un- 

 doubted that hardly any one thought of disregarding 

 them, or indeed would have ventured to do so. The 

 Land Act gave the customs legal right. Having 

 been acted on by landlord and tenant alike, there was a 

 clear equity in favour of the customs, and it was right 

 that any legal doubt about them should be removed. 

 There have been disputes under the Land Act, 

 but they have been about small accessories of the 



