The Times' Commissioner in Ireland has contributed a most remarkable
fact to the discussion on Irish tenure. Mr. Bianconi, the great car proprietor, bought in 1855 two lots of land in Portar- lington. The lands yielded 2305 a year, but were occupied by a "lazy, beggarly population of tenants-at-will," who were often in arrear with their rent. Mr. Bianconi raised their rents more than 50 per cent., to £473 a year, but granted the people leases for 31 years. The rent has been regularly paid, and though the landlord has expended nothing except in repairing farmsteads, "the tenantry are now a contented yeomanry." This is Mr. Bianconi's own statement as landlord, and seems to us conclusive ; yet if we were to apply the same principle to all Ireland, giving a 30-year settlement to all tenants who would pay a high rent to the day, the landlords would declare they had been plundered.
