property in a different manner from those of England. Upon them the liability was directly placed of finding the money for the public establishments of their counties, the churches, prisons, and police. They had the determination of questions of road-making; and having to contribute directly a large proportion of the county expenditure, they took an active interest in its administration. This brought them into closer business contact with the farmers; and recent legislation has tended to increase this connection by the principle of imposing all county rates in certain proportion directly on landowners and farmers, and giving to both a representation at the same county or parish board. There is thus a better fusion of the two interests than in England, and a readier appreciation on the part of the landowner of the outlays requisite on his part to enable his tenant to make the most of the land he farms. The time seems rapidly approaching when the Scotch system of equal valuation and rating, imposed directly upon both landowner and farmer, will be imitated in England, and lead

Nonresidence

of landowners

to the principle of local administration in each county by representatives of every interest at a county board.

In Ireland the relation between landlord

and tenant is altogether different from that of Previous to the famine

produced England and Scotland.

system of middlemen in Ireland, and its consequent evils.

of 1846, the great landowners were non-resident, and the land was still in a great measure in the hands of middle-men on leases for lives, with leave to subdivide and sublet for the same time. These men had no permanent interest in the property; their business was to make an income out of it at the least cost, and their intermediate position severed the otherwise natural connection. between landlord and tenant. The famine of 1846 prostrated the class of middle-men entirely, and brought the landowner and the real tenants face to face. But the hold which the latter had been permitted to obtain led them to consider the landowner very much as only the holder of the first charge on the land; and they were in the habit of selling and buying their farms among themselves subject to this charge, a course which, as a matter of practice, was tacitly

accepted by the landowner. He had security for his rent in the money paid by an incoming tenant, who, for his own safety, required the landowner's consent to the change of tenancy, and the landowner's agent then received the "price" of the farm (for that was the term used), and handed it over to the outgoing tenant, after deducting all arrears of rent. This suited the convenience of landowners, the most of whom had no money to spend on improvements, many of them non-resident and taking little interest in the country, and dealing with a numerous body of small tenants with whom they seldom came into personal contact. In the north of Ireland this custom of sale became legally recognised as tenant-right. The want of it in other parts of Ireland produced an agitation which ultimately led to the Irish Land Act, under which legislative protection is given to customs capable of proof. The custom of "selling" the farm, subject to the approval of the landowner, by a tenant on yearly tenure, is rapidly gaining ground in Ireland; and so firmly are the people imbued with this idea of their rights, that the

clauses of the Irish Land Act, which enable the tenant, by the aid of a loan of Government money, on very easy terms, to purchase the proper ownership of his farm, are rarely acted upon, from the belief that the farm is already his, under the burden of a moderate rent-charge to his nominal landlord. Circumstances have thus brought about a situation in which the landowner cannot deal with the same freedom with his property as in England or Scotland, either in the selection of his tenants or in the fair readjustment of rent, and this has, in a great measure, arisen naturally from the neglect by the landlord of his proper duties, in not himself executing those indispensable permanent improvements which the tenant was thus obliged to undertake, and who in this way established for himself a claim to a co-partnership in the soil itself.

CHAPTER VI.

LAND IMPROVEMENT.

HAVING now endeavoured to explain the respec- Settle

ments and

brances

land

the

ment of

their pro

perty.

tive positions of the three interests engaged in incumthe cultivation of the soil in each of the three hinder the free action countries forming the United Kingdom, I of many proceed to consider the circumstances which owners in embarrass the free action of a large proportion manageof the landowners, and the modes by which these have been more or less overcome. A very large proportion of the land is held by tenants for life under strict settlement, a condition which prevents the power of sale, and it is also frequently burdened with payments to other members of the family, and in many cases with debt. The nominal income is thus often very much reduced, and the apparent owner of five thousand a year may have little more than half of it to spend. In such cases there is no capital available for the improvements which a landowner is called upon