Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so, but the custom is. From immemorial times the tenant-right has been admitted here; and in consequence the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the necessary improvements, and to invest his hoard in the land, sure as he is to profit by it.
That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch origin; three times out of five he belongs to the Protestant persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist); there is not between him and his landlord the antagonism of race and worship which is to be found in other provinces. The landlord himself fulfils his duty better, and does not affect to spend abroad the money he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some guild or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere, which perhaps does not make the best use possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged to justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic foundation, trials of culture on the large scale, innovation, and examples.
Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and belongs to the same geological, ethnological, commercial, and religious system. Capital is less timorous here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By the side of agriculture there are important factories, which help to sustain and feed it. Instead of keeping invariably to oats, turnips, and the time-honoured potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the 400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast, Dundalk, and Drogheda.
A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings, and to constitute in that way great and middling farms, has been developing lately in Ulster. The peasants are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland. They find day-work more easily because agriculture is conducted there on more scientific principles, and they are not condemned to remain idle four days out of seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch Ireland, without being such as to be offered as a pattern to the civilised world, is about as good as possible under the feudal régime and landlordism.
Londonderry.
The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious. Thus in the neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry, but the natives all say Derry), you observe with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam machinery, which puts remote places in communication with the railway. The carriages are of superior make, divided into three classes, towed by an engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do, out of Mayo and Galway, that steam tramway puffs in your face a breath of civilisation. You seem to enter a different world.
Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge over the Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest its wealth, justifies that impression. It is the capital of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James I., entrusted by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,” which included twelve guilds of the city of London. For a century or two those grants of land did not answer as had been expected. But they have ended, in the course of time, by being prosperous. The municipal estates of Coleraine and Derry are accounted now the most flourishing in the island.
Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is very brilliant, even in Ulster. One of the counties of the province, Donegal, is the poorest in all Ireland, and two or three others are not much better. Even in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the yoke of landlordism. The Antrim Tenant Association went so far this year as to ask for a 50 per cent. reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce and the sheer impossibility of going on paying at the previous rate. It must be noted that tenant-right being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer always pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying would diminish by as much the value of his share in the proprietorship, which is estimated on an average at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.