THE IRISH LAND BILL.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR"]
Sur,—As I have been both an owner and a tenant of land in Ireland, perhaps you may spare me room for a few words on the interesting letter of " Scrutator "in the Spectator of March 16th. He seems to me to write from a British rather than an Irish experience. The real difficulty is to decide how much of the increased value of a farm may be dire to "tenants' improve- menta," and how much to various other causes, such as new railways and roads, discoveries in agriculture, such as guano and chemical manure, improved breeds of stock, and last, but not least, the simple "unearned increment" represented in the main by the very high prices eagerly paid every day in Ireland for the occupation right of farms subject to a "fair rent." " Scrutator " assumes a case of a tenant, by an outlay of £10 per acre, making a piece of land grow three blades of grass where before it could not grow one. What happened in Ireland (ex Ulster) during the first half of the present century was generally the reverse of this. A tenant got, in, say, 1800, a piece of land that naturally produced three blades of grass, and by ignorant and exhausting tillage, he and his successors reduced its fertility till it could only produce one blade, and that a bad one. The present generation of tenants, having acquired some agricultural skill, have largely ceased to exhaust their land ; but it will be another generation at least before they have restored the fertility which their "pre- decessors in title" had so grievously impaired. A statute of limitation for these claims is badly needed in the interest of all parties. The fairest date to fix would be about
Previous page
