TENANT-RIGHT.
The agitation for Tenant-Right in Ireland is destined to fail—in fact, has virtually failed already. The Imperial Parliament will never concede that right, nor will any Legislature similarly constituted. And yet the demand has the clearest and strongest basis of natural and eternal justice, as any fair mind must confess. What is that demand? Simply that the creator of a new value shall be legally entitled to that value, or, in case he is required to surrender it to another, shall be paid a fair and just equivalent therefor. Here is a farm, for instance, whereof one man is recognised by law as the owner, and he lets it for three lives or a specific term of years to a tenant-cultivator for ten, fifteen or twenty shillings per acre. The tenant occupies it, cultivates it, pays the rent and improves it. At the close of his term, he is found to have built a good house on it instead of the old rookery he found there, while by fencing, draining, manuring and subsoiling he has doubled its productive capacity, and consequently its annual value. He wishes to cultivate it still, and offers to renew the lease for any number of years, and pay the rent punctually. "But no," says the landlord, "you must pay twice as much rent as hitherto." "Why so?" "Because the land is more valuable than it was when you took it." "Certainly it is; but that value is wholly the fruit of my labor—it has cost you nothing." "Can't help that, Sir; you improved for your own benefit, and with a full knowledge that the additional value would revert to me on the expiration of your lease; so pay my price or clear out!"—Is this right? The law says Yes; but Justice says No; Public Good says even more imperatively No. The laws of the land should encourage every occupier to improve the land he holds, to expend capital and employ labor upon it, so as to increase its value and productive capacity from year to year; but the law of the British Empire discourages improvement and impedes the employment of labor by taking the product from the producer and giving it arbitrarily to the landlord. Yet the landlord influence in Parliament is so predominant, so overwhelming, that no repeal, no mitigation even, of this great wrong is probable; and every demand for it is overborne by a senseless outcry against Agrarianism. Still, the agitation for Tenant-Right does good by imbuing the popular mind with some idea of the monster evil and wrong of the Monopoly of Land—an idea which will not always remain unfruitful.