WHAT WILL DO GOOD IN IRELAND. 229 



The principle professed in behaK of the Land Act 

 was that capricious evictions might be stopped, but 

 it was expressly added that no one wished to keep bad 

 tenants on the land. The Act, however, has been 

 put in force in a way that has tended directly to keep 

 bad tenants in their farms. 



It has been held that the Act gave an absolute 

 right to every tenant of four to seven years' rent as 

 compensation for eviction. Non-payment of a year's 

 rent alone deprived him of this right. The landlord 

 no doubt might have a set-off against him. But the 

 most justifiable cause for eviction has been still 

 held a disturbance, and still left the burden of four 

 to seven years' rent to be paid by the landlord. 



The only right course would have been that, if 

 there was justifiable cause for eviction, the landlords 

 should not incur the penalty. 



I have had but one land case myself. A poor 

 old tenant had forty acres of capital land. Before I 

 bought it, he had divided the farm with his eldest 

 son, who was the most hopelessly lazy fellow I ever 

 knew. He soon could not pay his part of the rent. 

 So I had to turn him out, and take the loss of his 

 rent on myself, giving his land back to the father, as 

 he had another son ; this other son, when little more 

 than a boy, was convicted of a bad attempt at rape, 

 in one of my own fields, and got twelve months in 

 Cork gaol for it. He used habitually to rob ^ his 

 father's potato pit, to supply money for liis iniquities. 



