

WHAT WILL DO GOOD IN IRELAND. 231 



to be complained of. I think this last requirement 

 might be extended in such a way that all future 

 lettings of land should be by lease for thirty-one 

 years. A twenty-one years' lease is long enough 

 in England and Scotland, and I am convinced is a 

 great gain to both tenant and landlord, because it 

 gives security for the tenant's expenditure. Though 

 thirty-one years may be too long a term, in some re- 

 spects, yet, with the ideas that prevail in Ireland (I do 

 not mean the wild view of the present moment), I 

 think the term need not be objected to. 



More drainage by tenants, if landlords do not 

 themselves drain as they ought, and thirty-one-year 

 leases in all cases, will give much increased produce 

 from the land, and so satisfy M. de Molinari's principle. 

 It might be a condition of the lease that the tenant 

 should drain all wet land in the first fifteen years, if 

 the landlord did not do it, and the tenant get a charge 

 for the outlay in full. I have often thought a justifi- 

 able pressure on both landlord and tenant could be 

 had if the land was valued for rating, not as now at 

 its present value (but when more than 5 per 

 cent of the farm is wet and reclaimable), by valuing 

 it at what it would be worth if drained and re- 

 claimed. Those who now drain their land suffer an 

 injustice if their neighbours do not also drain. The 

 sums required for the Poor or the Eoads are applotted 

 on a fixed area, and those who raise the value of their 

 farms by draining pay a larger share of the sum so 



