A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. 385 



the kind, and weakness to the tenants, and hence to the 

 whole farming group." He adds that large holdings favour 

 tenancy, whereas small holdings promote proprietorship. 

 No doubt tenant farming takes place in the United States 

 under different circumstances and with a different object 

 in view from what prevails in Europe. The landowner 

 who lets his land there is not the magnate grandee of our 

 country, but the speculator, to whom it does not matter 

 much whether his land produces much or little while he 

 holds it. He is holding on for an eventual substantial rise 

 in capital value. However, from a national point of view 

 the effect is the same. Under the tenant, who deliberately 

 robs his land, that land produces less, in the proportion, 

 as already mentioned, of about two to three. Therefore 

 the Nation loses in food production, which, under our 

 present aspect, is the main consideration. 



We find telling proof in support of what has been put 

 forward in the remarkable prosperity which has resulted 

 from the turning of tenants into freeholders in the most 

 advanced parts of Ireland, in Ulster, where farmers carry 

 a head upon their shoulders and know, with canny Scottish 

 cuteness, how to turn favourable conditions to account. 



" Everywhere in the County Down," so writes Mr. Hall, " we 

 were surprised by the obvious prosperity and comparative 

 wealth of the small farmers, men holding from 40 to 60 

 acres. To take an example, we were with one man near the 

 shore of Strangford Lough, whose farm was a trifle over 50 

 acres, on which he had himself built a good modern house, as 

 the agents would say, with two reception and five bedrooms, 

 and a trim flower garden in front. It was clear that he and 

 his family lived comfortably if plainly ; he spoke of hunting, 

 though that was in the way of business, because he bred a light 

 horse or two every year. He spoke, too, as an expert of wild 

 fowling on the Lough ; his style, in fact, was that of the English 

 farmer, not of 50, but of 300 acres. Now it is difficult to com- 

 pare rents in Ireland with those in England, because in Ireland 

 the landlord has only provided the actual land : the buildings, 

 roads, fences, drains, etc., all the immovables which we know 

 on English estates have often cost the landlord within the last 

 seventy years more than the fee simple of the land, have been 

 provided by the tenant, and long ago in Ulster became his pro- 



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