TENANT RIGHT 265 



shores 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 bed rooms, 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 compare rents in Ireland with 

 those in England, because in Ireland the landlord has 

 only provided the actual land ; the buildings, fences, 

 roads, 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 property under the old tenant right 

 custom which later became legalized all over Ireland. 

 We believe there is only one estate in Ulster, belong- 

 ing to a City Company, where the English custom 

 prevails of the landlord doing the improvements. The 

 rent on the farm we were considering used to stand at 

 about 2 os. an acre. Then came the judicial rent 

 system, perhaps the most demoralizing piece of 

 legislation which even Ireland has experienced, and 

 successive revisions lowered the rent by perhaps 20 per 

 cent. Finally, under the Land Act the farmer bought 

 at twenty years' purchase of his judicial rent spread in 

 annual instalments over sixty-eight years, with the re- 

 sult that he is now paying I2s. to 143. an acre instead 

 of 2os., and gradually acquiring the land. Without 

 doubt he has been thereby encouraged to better his 

 farming, for though the old tenant right gave him 



