In any case the tenant upon ejectment will be entitled to compensation for improvements, from which arrears of rent may be deducted. It is the wise and beneficent intent of the bill to place this helpless class under the special protection of the court, and make it the object of large equity jurisdiction conferred; and it even holds out a release to the landlord of these penalties, providing he gives to his yearly tenant a lease of at least twenty-one years' duration.
The regulation of the tenure of lease-holders generally is most judicious, and the only compulsory one in the bill. In future all leases shall be submitted to, and the terms, as regards rents and covenants, approved by, the court, before their validity will be recognized. Heretofore, Irish leases have been made exclusively for the benefit of one party, and the ingenuity of the lower grade of the legal profession seems to have been taxed to the utmost to devise restrictions on husbandry. We have copies of several of those instruments of recent execution before us, and they certainly smack more of the pre-magna-charta era than of the present enlightened century. A petition presented to the House of Commons at its last session, from the inhabitants of the parish of Clonard, county of Meath, set forth that tenants there "are charged with a penalty of £5 for every tree, and every perch of hedge cut, injured, or destroyed;" they are to break no land without permission of the landlord, and even then only such land and in such manner as the landlord specified; a fine of £10 is exacted for "each acre or part of acre assigned, let, underlet, or let in con-acre or otherwise, or meadowed without formal written permission;" they are not to remove or cause to be removed any top-dressing, compost, or manure of any sort, nor any hay, straw, corn in the straw, holm, or fodder of any sort, nor any turnips, mangel-wurzel, or other green crop of any kind, under penalty of £5 per load or part of load; and the top-dressing, manure, etc., are to remain on the land at the termination of the tenancy, and are to be the property of the landlord. The Earl of Leitrim, a very large landed proprietor in the north, probably not considering the above restrictions sufficiently onerous, has had inserted in his numerous leases clauses whereby the tenants are required to preserve his fish and game; and without his permission in writing they are not to make any new roads, fences, or drains, nor to build up or alter houses or buildings, nor to grow two white grain crops in succession, nor to have beyond a certain maximum of tillage, nor to break up permanent grass-fields, nor to set potatoes where there has been grass the year before,[42] nor to cut turf, etc.; and to surrender their leases at any time at six months' notice, or in case any of them be imprisoned by any civil or criminal process for a term exceeding fourteen days! But Edward Henry Cooper, who is supposed sometimes to honor Markie Castle with his presence, requires not only the observance of all the above conditions on the part of his serfs, but binds them to become informers and prosecutors in their own names against any poachers who may be found in the leaseholds; and they are also to procure evidence (how is not stated) against their neighbors who might kill a hare or spear a salmon on their premises. The farmers who have the happiness of living under this philanthropist are required "to submit all disputes and differences touching trespass or measuring to, and abide by the final award of"—Edward Henry Cooper or his agents; a very impartial tribunal, no doubt! The above extracts may be taken as specimens of the restrictions which surround even the most favored class of Irish farmers of the present day, and which, being made with all the forms of law, backed by the certainty of the strict enforcement of the penalties, must have a direct and ruinous tendency to check improvement and limit the scope of improved cultivation of lands.
The term improvements, so frequently met with in the bill, is defined to mean such as are suitable to the character of the holding and add to its letting value, such as buildings, reclaimed land, manures, and tillage, and the old rule of law, which presumed all improvements made by the landlord unless proved to the contrary, is reversed in favor of the tenant. No existing improvement will be paid for if not made within twenty years previous to the passage of the act, except permanent buildings and reclaimed land, nor where by the terms of a lease the holder agreed to make the improvements at his own expense. In the future no claim will be allowed for improvements made contrary to the terms of the letting, or for such as are not required for the due cultivation of the farm, nor when the landlord agrees to make them and does not neglect to do so, nor where the tenant, as part of the consideration of the lease, agrees to do them at his own charge. But whatever the tenant pays to the out-going tenant for compensation, with the sanction of his landlord, he shall be reimbursed on the termination of his tenancy.
Such, in brief, is an outline of the law under which the farmers of Ireland will have to live for some years to come. Although not all they demand and have a right to expect, it is nevertheless a great improvement on the present system, if system it may be called, under which they have so long tried to exist. Whatever is valuable in the local customs will be substantially preserved and legalized; the tenant will have some remote prospect of becoming a purchaser, and the tenant at will, a leaseholder. Compensation for improvements is guaranteed to every one capable of paying his rent, and the luxury of evictions, if not destroyed, is made an expensive one for landlords. We cannot expect that this measure, if passed in its best form, will wholly stop agitation in Ireland, but we trust and believe that it will largely conduce to the wealth and industry of her people.
THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEFRIENDING CHILDREN.
A new association has entered the field of charitable labor in this city bearing the modest title at the head of this article. It has been organized and is recommended to the public by ladies whose names are a guarantee of its success. The sphere of its charitable work is among poor children of degraded parents. It is not known, except to the few practical workers among the poor, that there exists in New York a pauper class nearly if not quite as destitute and degraded as that which is found in the great capitals of Europe. There are persons here who are born in this lowest social stratum, and will never rise from it without help. Their lives begin, are passed, and end in what seems to be hopeless degradation. The portions of the city where this class of its population will be found are those bordering on the rivers, on either side, extending as far north as Fifty-ninth street. Children born in this class inherit the vices and diseases of their parents, as well as their poverty. They exhibit a precocity in debauchery which no one can appreciate who has not been brought into contact with them. They inhale with their first respiration a fetid atmosphere. They have an instinct for vice and crime. Many of them escape the penalties of the criminal code simply because they are so young that the law overlooks them. They come into the world with the child's instinct to look to its parent as the source of authority, and a model for imitation. This authority is, for the most part, exerted to compel the commission of offences, and the model is a finished example for the grossest sins. With such influences from without, coöperating with natural and inherited tendencies to vice, it is easy to see with what fearful rapidity the child will be driven along in evil courses. If education begins, as is claimed, with the first outcry of the infant, what a training is inaugurated here!
There is another class of our population, not strictly a pauper class, but which is raised but little above it. The persons who compose it earn a scanty living by fitful labor, and are exposed to all the temptations which beset extreme poverty. They easily fall into vicious habits, squander their earnings, and their children are left without care, to subsist as best they may. These children, equally with those of the class still lower, are in need of every thing which a judicious charity can supply. The section of the city where more of these little outcasts, and their wretched parents, may be found than in any other of equal dimensions, is that bounded by Bank street on the south, Sixteenth or Seventeenth street on the north, the Ninth avenue and the river. Out of this section St. Bernard's parish has been carved, and it was here that, a few months ago, the small beginning was made from which the new organization has sprung. On the seventh day of September last, a few ladies met at St. Bernard's church, to open an industrial school for girls. Notice that the school would be commenced on that day had been given in the church on the Sunday preceding. No children came at the hour named, and the ladies, with one of the priests of the parish, went out into the lanes and alleys to compel them to come in. About twenty-five girls were gathered in the large upper room in the church edifice during the forenoon. They presented a pitiful spectacle of extreme poverty and degradation. They were clad in filthy rags, and, young as they were, the faces of many of them bore traces of a course of vice and crime in which sad progress had already been made. It was clear from this first day's experiment that there was an instant and urgent duty to be performed, in reaching and reclaiming children of this class. The ladies, therefore, resolved to hold the school on Tuesday and Friday mornings in each week, from ten to twelve o'clock. The large room in the church was placed at their disposal. On the second school-day, fifty girls attended, and the number soon reached one hundred. The character and magnitude of the work which these ladies had, almost unconsciously, undertaken began to dawn on them. The school had filled up with hardly any effort on their part. The children were in need of every thing. They must be clothed and fed. They must be gently led away from evil practices and taught the very alphabet of new and better lives. A few dollars were collected at once and materials for clothing purchased. Garments were cut out, and the children soon taught to assist in making them, and the articles were distributed as they were needed. This has been continued until every child who has attended the school has received a complete outfit, including a new pair of shoes. But the girls came hungry as well, and must be fed. At the close of the school on each day, a substantial meal was served; and on Thanksgiving and Christmas days, generous dinners were given to two hundred children, for which turkeys in abundance were provided. The first step in any efficient charitable work among the destitute is, of course, to provide for physical wants. We must begin with the body. "First the natural," and "afterward that which is spiritual," is the divine order. The soul is to be reached through the body, or rather, so closely united are the two, that they are both acted upon by the care bestowed upon either. The normal cravings of the body, when unsatisfied, become diseased and the fruitful source of vicious indulgences. The hunger which demands but cannot get proper food, will demand and get sustenance hurtful to body and soul. The little child who leaves a miserable shelter in the morning, cold and hungry, will spend the first penny bestowed in charity by a careless giver at a rum-hole made familiar by errands for liquor at the command of a drunken parent, where even a penny will buy what, for the moment, answers for both food and clothing. Little girls of twelve, and even younger, have come to this school in the morning whose only breakfast has been the liquor which they could buy for a cent, and who had already contracted intemperate habits.
With children of this class, then, the first step toward moral improvement is the self-respect which they put on with their first warm, clean dress, and the satisfaction which follows a meal of wholesome food. This first step, however, leads to the next, direct religious instruction; the "line upon line and precept upon precept" by which the child's soul is to be instructed and purified.