I have been told by a well-informed gentleman, whose veracity I cannot doubt, that it is quite common in the county of Down (and indeed I have been told the same thing in other counties) to find an improving tenant paying 2 l. to 3 l. an acre for land, which he has at his own expense brought up to a good state of cultivation, while the adjoining land of his lazy neighbour—­originally of equal value—­yields only 20 s. to 35 s. an acre.  The obvious tendency of this unjust and impolitic course on the part of landlords and agents, is to discourage improvements, to dishearten the industrious, and to fill the country with thriftless, desponding, and miserable occupiers, living from hand to mouth.  There are circumstances under which even selfish men will toil hard, though others should share with them the benefit of their labours; but if they feel that this partnership in the profits of their industry is the result of a system of legalised injustice, which enables unscrupulous men to appropriate at will the whole of the profits, their moral sense so revolts against that system that they resolve to do as little as they possibly can.

The consequence of these painful relations of landlord and tenant, even in this comparatively happy county, is a perceptible degeneracy in the manhood of the people.  Talk to an old inhabitant, who has been an attentive observer of his times, and he will tell you that the vigorous and energetic, the intelligent and enterprising, are departing to more favoured lands, and that this process has produced a marked deterioration in the population within his memory.  He can distinctly recollect when there were more than double the present number of strong farmers in the country about Belfast.  He declares that, with many exceptions of course, the land is getting into the hands of a second or third class of farmers, who are little more than servants to the small landlords.  Even where there are leases, such intelligent observers affirm that they are so over-ridden with conditions that the farmer has no liberty or security to make any great improvements.  Were it otherwise he would not think a thirty-one years’ lease sufficient for the building of a stone house, that would be as good at the end of a hundred years as at the end of thirty.  All the information that I can gather from thoughtful men, who are really anxious for a change that would benefit the landlords as well as themselves, points to the remedy which Lord Granard has suggested, as the most simple, feasible, and satisfactory—­the legalisation and extension of the tenant-right custom.  They rejoice that such landlords now proclaim the injustice which the tenant class have so long bitterly felt—­namely, the presumption of law that all the improvements and buildings on the farm belong to the lord of the soil, although the notorious fact is that they are all the work of the tenant.