•200 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



Then what is a fair rent ? Is it wliat an honest, in- 

 dustrious tenant of reasonable means can make of 

 the land ? or what an indolent, ignorant man, per- 

 haps a drunkard and a pauper, can make ? The most 

 easy and liberal rule on this point, strictly and 

 honestly applied, would cause ten evictions for one 

 that is now made by landlords. The strictest land- 

 lords among us do not evict one quarter of those who 

 ought to be evicted, if the good of the country was duly 

 considered. It is industry that makes the whole dif- 

 ference. In no business can any one get rich in any 

 way, except by self-exertion. Half the time spent in 

 work that is now spent in trying to get something 

 out of landlords by scheming, would make rich men of 

 inmibers of tenants. No part of M. de Molinari's letter 

 to the Journal des D^lats was more striking than 

 that in which he described the sadly low social and 

 moral state of many Irish tenants, and divided them 

 into two classes — one with fair-sized farms at mode- 

 rate rents, who were industrious, paying their rents 

 and living comfortably ; tlie other with small farms 

 at equally easy rents, but idle, in debt, and steeped 

 in whisky, who could not support themselves if 

 they held the land rent-free. Professor Baldwin's 

 evidence before the Duke of Eichmond's Commis- 

 sion on Agricultural Distress is also very remarkable 

 as to the entire badness and worthlessness in all re- 

 spects of the large class of bad Irish tenants. Even 

 if the County Court Judge had to decide what is a 



