The Irish Tenant-Right chiefs do not appear to be satisfied
with the Land Bill. We publish to-day a letter from the editor of the Freeman's Journal, their organ, disputing the usual view of the Bill. He says the mere tender of the lease will extinguish the Custom, and apparently wishes for clauses enabling the tenant to claim the lease,—an impossibility, we fear. His second point, that failure to pay rent ought not to destroy a claim to compen- sation exceeding the default, is sound enough ; but we must give the landlord security as well as the tenant, and how is that to be done otherwise ? Mr. Gray would let a teu-pounder fail to pay rent for six years and then claim £10 on departure. That won't do. Note that the landlords' papers, or some of them, are saying that fixity of tenure, with periodical revisions, would pay the land- lords better than this Bill, which they think will stereotype rents. If the landlords knew their own interests, we should yet have an amendment changing the seven years' right into a 1,000 years', but providing for periodic valuations.
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