THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR ."] SIR,—I have to thank you for publishing my letters on the state of Ireland.
My last proposal, to give to an evicted tenant-at-will an action for damages against the landlord, provided that the tenant has not violated any covenant, will appear a very wild Irish pro- posal to English readers. Nevertheless, I only ask for Irish tenants what English tenants have already, namely, the pro- tection of law for local customs. Tenant-right is the custom of Ireland. Tenant-right consists in this,—that an outgoing tenant is permitted to sell the right of occupation of his farm to the incoming one ; the landlord, of course, having the right to object to any incoming tenant that he does not like. It is, how- ever, so indefinite a custom, that it would make confusion worse confounded to enact simply that local custom shall have the force of law. It is a question for arrangement, and I believe that what I propose, would be a fair com- promise. I do not deny that it might, perhaps, give the tenant too much, in some cases; but almost any legal settle- ment would be better than the present inconsistency between custom and law, under which the tenant-right of farms may be, and is, often sold at 20/. an acre, with the landlord as a consenting party ; and yet there is no law to prevent the landlord from evicting the tenant, and confiscating his interest. You may say the tenants are very foolish to purchase interests to which the legal title is not defective, but null. I think so, too ; but, good or bad, it is the custom of a whole nation, and is entitled to recogni- tion as such.
The expression Ulster tenant-right is misleading. The custom is not, as is often implied, in any way peculiar to the descendants of the Scottish settlers in Ulster. On the contrary, there is no part of Ireland where the price of tenant-right is higher than in the Celtic county of Donegal.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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