40. The tenants can obtain security of tenure by demanding and accepting leases; many landlords are willing to grant long leases at fixed rents on fair terms.
41. Therefore, at the most the law should force the landlords to grant “security leases,” and leave them to obtain (by means of a fine) any extra value which security will fetch.
42. Any further privileges obtained by the tenant would only be used as additional facilities for borrowing money at ruinous rates.
43. The Ulster tenants have obtained their tenant-right by purchase, or by a quid pro quo; the concession of free sale would gratuitously endow existing tenants with a valuable property, which they have neither earned, bought, nor inherited.
44. Many landlords have bought up the tenant-right on their farms; it is manifestly unfair to reimpose it without compensation.
The landlords have largely invested capital in the soil; the three F’s would prevent them in future from making improvements; and the tenants’ power to do so would also be diminished.
45. The landlords, as a class, have invested capital very largely in the improvement of the soil; the improvements have been by no means entirely effected by the tenant.
46. It would no longer be to the interest of the landlord to invest his capital in the soil; an effectual obstacle would have been placed in the way of his doing so.
47. Therefore, those improvements,—drainage, straightening fields and boundaries, &c., which affect many holdings, and can only be done by the landlord, would no longer be executed.