LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE ULSTER FARMER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOF.."]
is deeply to be regretted that so few English legislators have taken the trouble to visit Ireland, and given themselves the chance of getting penetrated to some extent with Irish. sentiment, by coming into personal contact with the people on the spot.' I learned more about Ulster tenant-right by spend- ing some hours yesterday on the farms of a couple of Ulster tenants, than I had done by a dozen years of reading about the Ulster Custom. I really think it ought to be made compulsory on the British M.P. to produce a certificate of having spent, (say) at least four weeks in Ireland,—one in each of her four Provinces.
In despair of comprehending the Irish Land Question in England, I am come over to endeavour to get some idea of its working here. I have come to the conclusion that it is only by divesting oneself of all one's English ideas of the relations of landlord and tenant, that one is in a condition to enter on the inquiry. The Irish landlord, as a rule, seems to have left his tenant to do everything which, as a matter of course, an English landlord would have done for him. In the north of Ireland, tenants' improvements are conspicuous everywhere, in the shape of commodious buildings of all kinds; and drainage appears to have been largely carried out. In the south and west, improve- ments of any kind are conspicuous by their absence, so I cannot see where the landlord found his opportunity of confiscations Between Dublin and Belfast, the farming, as a rule, appears up to the English standard. In the south and west, it seems 'below any standard at all. There can be no question that in many parts of Ireland, the land has been purposely allowed to get into a foul state, with the view of deceiving the Commis- sioners, so as to ensure a low valuation in the interest of the tenant. The result must inevitably be that for many years to -come there must be a considerable falling-off in the produce.
I am convinced that it was not excessive rents which ground down the peasant-farmers of the south and west, but the small- ness and barren nature of their holdings. " If they had them rent-free down there," an Ulster farmer remarked to me yester- day, " they would starve on them." No wonder there is no disposition to buy in Kerry or Connemara.
But I am disappointed to find an equal indisposition to buy in Ulster. " I would rather sit in practical perpetuity at a low rent, than own my own farm," was the opinion uttered in a very decided tone by the same Ulster farmer who condemned the small holdings. "Land," he went on to say, "is falling in value, and I believe it is going to fall further still, so I am not inclined to buy at present." I am convinced also that both in north and south the tenants expect farther favours from Parliament. and that there is a natural unwillingness to change the blessed state of occupier, for whom the State shows so much consideration, for that of owner, which is in such bad odour everywhere, and especially in Ireland.
I cannot feel sanguine as to the beneficial effects of the Land Act in quieting the disturbed spirits of the peasant-farmer. He is generally an indolent fellow, engaged in the hopeless task -sof trying to get a living where no living is to be got. The prac- tical fixity of tenure it confers will do something, doubtless, to .encourage the exceptionally industrious and enterprising amongst them to improve their holdings ; but the land is so deteriorated, from want of drainage, which can only be effectu- ally carried out by a combination of adjoining occupiers, that I fear the prospect is a very hopeless one. I can discover no 'trace of any real subsidence of the bad-feeling of the bulk of the people in the south and west.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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