178 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



Besides, in those days very few of my men had any 

 money. What could they have done under Tenant- 

 right, and with their farms often intermixed in four 

 or five separate parts of the estate ? Unless hy going 

 in debt, not one of them under the Ulster custom 

 could have got an acre more than he had, or a better 

 situated field. 



m 



The payment of the arrears of rent out of the 

 purchase money of Tenant-right differs nothing from 

 the payment of a fine to the landlord, which in Eng- 

 land everybody understands is ruinous to any estate, 

 and so has been almost wholly abandoned there. 

 Nothing but the great ignorance in Ireland of sound 

 principles relating to land prevents such a system 

 being scouted as the utter folly it really is. Whether 

 the incoming tenant pays his money to the outgoing 

 tenant for Tenant-right, or to a landlord as a fine, 

 equally drains him of capital. It is in substance a 

 fine far beyond the amount ever heard of anywhere 

 else, or that the hardest landlord ever exacted. Such 

 fines as seven, or ten, or twenty years' value were 

 never dreamed of in business ; the usual copyhold fines 

 never approached such a sum. It is certain that if 

 Tenant-right was made compulsory throughout Ire- 

 land, all understanding landlords would be forced only 

 to let on heavy fines to secure themselves. 



This ignorance extends to men of ability and 

 character. A man so much respected as Judge 

 Longfield, whom I wish to speak of only with the 



