Mr Spottiswood, who holds many extensive agencies, including Lord Londonderry's and Sir Robert Bateson's, states that part of the properties with which he is connected have been leased in perpetuity in small quantities; and he adds, that such mode of letting "has not a good effect at all." He is asked--"Do you find that the tenants are less industrious?" "Yes, they are paying the present proprietor, in many instances, not more than two-and-sixpence or five shillings an acre; they are quite independent of their landlords, who have no control over them."--"How do you suppose that their poverty arose?" "I think it arose from the subdivision of the properties; and the parties feeling a sort of independence, they do not think it necessary to become industrious, depending upon their farms for their support, and paying these very small rents;" and Mr Fagoe says--"I must admit that there are tenants who hold old leases, whose farms are very badly cultivated."
We have now quoted authorities from all quarters of Ireland, to show that the want of tenure cannot be the cause of the poverty of the people, or the bad cultivation of the land; but that, in point of fact, it has directly the contrary effect. Almost the whole of Earl Fitzwilliam's tenantry hold at will; and Mr Furlong, the agent, swears that _two-thirds_ of the Devon estate "is set from year to year;" if this be a bad system, why do those noblemen practise it?--if a good one, why condemn others for acting as they do themselves?
By the agitators, the deplorable state of the Irish people is, on all occasions, attributed to the want of security in possession, and to the exorbitance of the rents. We have already, we trust, disposed of the former, more particularly as regards the disturbed counties. We shall now apply ourselves to ascertain the truth of the latter assertion; and the evidence taken before Lord Devon's Committee, strange as it may appear from the nature of the report, proves to a demonstration, that in those parts of the country _where the land is worst and highest rented, the people live in contentment and affluence; and that those parts in which the rents are lowest, and the soil richest, are stained with the commission of the most abominable atrocities_; and yet, with those facts staring them in the face, we find the government ready to adopt the suggestions of men who live by levying tribute on the people whose wretchedness they affect to deplore, because the opinions of those persons happen to be backed by a report _utterly at variance with the evidence on which it purports to be founded_.