The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland made a speech at a banquet
given by a Dublin Schools' Society on Thursday week, in which he made one very remarkable statement. The deposits in the joint-stock banks in Ireland now amount to /20,000,000, most of which, in Lord Spencer's judgment, is the saving of the agricul- tural classes. If that is correct, as we do not doubt, the fact will greatly facilitate arrangements for a reform of the tenure, for it shows that the farmers possess money which they do not want for cultivation, and which they are content to deposit at very limited interest. Buying off the right to raise the rent might seem to them a very expedient mode of investment, even if not a directly profitable one. How the tenure, however, must be distrusted, when an agricultural community in so poor a country keeps twenty millions out of the soil, to place it in banks which give perhaps two per cent. interest
