pupils have emigrated, and too many have succumbed to the depressing circumstances of the country, but there is fresh hope now that the tide has turned, and more prosperous days seem to be dawning.

There are district agricultural training schools at Belfast, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Cork. The course of instruction embraces all the branches of a sound English education, as well as the science and practice of improved agriculture. Some of the pupils are admitted free, and the fee for paying pupils is only £3 a quarter, the Education Commissioners contributing the additional payment required for board, education, books, and apparatus. The head-quarters of this agricultural department is at Albert Farm, Glasnevin, the superintendent of which, or the secretaries of the Marlborough Street Education Board, will give every information to those interested in the matter.

CHAPTER XVI.

• LAND TENURE AND THE NEW LAND ACT.

Leases-Tenant Right-Working of the Land Act-Rights of Landlords-Claims of Tenants.

INSECURITY of tenure, or, as the Irish would call

it, "want of tenure," is sufficient to account for the backward state of Irish agriculture. Division and subdivision of small properties, till starvation point was reached, accounts for part of the miserable condition of the people. But the absence of right relations between landlord and tenant have kept the country poor and uncultivated. Bad laws and bad customs perpetuated bad husbandry. In most parts of the country leases were not given by the landlords, sometimes from a desire to keep their tenants in political dependence, sometimes from inability to grant them. When they were granted, they were for lives rather than for terms. Tenants for lives had the franchise, tenants with leases were excluded, until the Reform Bill of 1832. Not till 1850 was the principle

admitted of enfranchisement on the value instead of the nature of the holding. It was the custom, and too generally the necessity, in Ireland, for the bare land to be let, the landlord doing nothing for buildings or repairs or improvements. The passion for land caused competition for farms among tenants as poor, if not so encumbered, as the nominal owners. The landlords, too generally absentees, pressed the agents or middlemen for money, and when they pressed the tenants, agrarian outrages were the result. There was no inducement to a farmer to spend money in better culture or in any improvements, with nothing in prospect but raised rent or eviction.

Disturbances about tenant right have not been confined to Catholic parts of Ireland. One of the most dangerous insurrections of last century, in 1772, was in Antrim. An estate belonging to the absentee Marquis of Donegal was proposed, on the expiring of the leases, to be let only to those who could pay large fines, or to new tenants. Most of the old tenants, neither able to pay the fines nor the advanced rents, were ejected. They maimed the cattle of those who occupied the farms, and committed many outrages, banding together under the name of Hearts of Steel. One of their number being confined in Belfast, under a charge of felony, was forcibly rescued, the officers of the military guard being persuaded to give up the

prisoner to prevent a serious fight. The association of the Steelmen spread into the neighbouring counties, and gained formidable strength by the accession of the peasantry, who sided with the tenants. Some prisoners, tried at Carrickfergus, were acquitted by the partiality of the witnesses and jury. An Act of Parliament was passed, ordering the trials to take place in counties different from those where the offences were committed. Some were taken to Dublin, but were there acquitted, public opinion resisting an Act which was declared to be unconstitutional. The Act was repealed, and further outrages occurring, several were tried in their own counties, condemned, and executed. The insurrection was suppressed, but the discontent was so deep that at that time many thousands of Protestants emigrated to America, and took a prominent part in the war which separated the colonies from the British empire.

The arrangements as to land tenure and compensation for improvements, familiarly known under the name of "Ulster tenant-right," had their origin in no statute laws, but gradually came into force through custom. A less disreputable class of landlords on the whole, and a more independent class of farmers than in other parts of Ireland, found it mutually advantageous to adopt some principle of equitable arrangement, both in the holding and the transfer of farms.

The custom varied in different parts of the country; and on different properties, but to its existence in any form may be attributed such superiority as Ulster could boast over other parts of Ireland as to agriculture. The poverty of the soil and the smallness of holdings prevented this superiority being very marked. Even where there was not the legal security of a lease, binding on the heirs of the lessor, there was the security of a farmer obtaining repayment from his successor of all that had been spent in improvements. Disputes as to rent still remained, and other difficulties, which rendered a new landlord and tenant law desirable for Ulster, as well as for the rest of Ireland. By the new Act, which came into force on the 1st of August, 1870, provision is made for legal as well as equitable adjustment of claims, by regular land sessions, with appeal to a higher land

court.

I made inquiries, whenever I had opportunity, as to the working of the Land Act, and, with the exceptions to be presently noticed, I heard general expression of satisfaction. It is thought, on the whole, to be an equitable compromise as to the rights of landlords and the claims of tenants. There is also general confidence in the administration of the new law, whether in the land sessions or in the courts of appeal. There is already a feeling of security in the