ULSTER TENANT-RIGHT. 179 



regard I feel for liim, is as ignorant in this way as 

 others. Judge Longfield's article in the Fortnightly 

 for August shows throughout that he knows notliing 

 of practical farming and management of land. Yet 

 it is on such knowledge of land that the question 

 turns, and no legal knowledge will make up for the 

 want of it. Judge Longfield does not say a word on 

 the undoubted evil of stripping a tenant bare of the 

 capital wanted for better farming his land, but pro- 

 poses that somehow the tenant should pay seven years' 

 rent to the landlord for Tenant-right. Seven years of 

 £50 a year rent of a farm is £350. Where are many 

 tenants to be found with capital enough to pay this, 

 make all permanent improvements, and farm the land 

 besides ? My tenants are richer than most, yet only 

 one or two would be able to do this, except by going 

 in debt. Judge Longfield's whole scheme is a milder 

 Ulster Tenant-right, honestly recognising in part the 

 rights of owners to their land. Why have they not 

 the same right to the whole as to part ? It is open 

 to the same difficulties and objections still, as a breach 

 of the rights of owners, unless he means it to be left 

 as voluntary. He suggests the rent may vary every 

 ten years, upon principles as complicated as a Chinese 

 puzzle, just as if nobody liad ever heard of the work- 

 ing of leases for nineteen or twenty -one years in 

 Scotland, and their benefit, and that the best farming 

 authorities in the kingdom believe such twenty -one 



