From whatever causes the wretched condition of Ireland may arise, want of tenure cannot be included amongst them; for if length of tenure secured prosperity, Ireland should have been prosperous indeed. In no country were such long leases heretofore given: from three lives and thirty-one years to three lives and sixty-one years, were the terms usually granted; and at this moment there are many leases still in existence, in all parts of the country, made towards the close of the last century, and held directly from the owners. And although the lands held under these are at a rent very much below even the present depressed value, and of course greatly under what they would have fetched in the time of the war, still we do not find their possessors generally comfortable or independent; but, on the contrary, they are in most instances in a worse condition than those tenants whose rent has varied with the times, and been influenced by the rise or fall in the value of agricultural produce. Seeing, then, that men placed in the most favourable circumstances, both as regards the moderation of their rents and the length of their tenures, are generally more wretched in the appearance of their dwellings, and more neglectful of the cultivation of their farms, than those at the mercy of landlords, represented to be the most tyrannical on earth--we must seek the cause of the degraded state of the people elsewhere than at the door of the owners of the soil. Until within the last few years, (and those are the years in which the landlords have most exerted themselves, and in which the tenantry, who would be influenced by them, have most improved,) leases of _at least_ twenty-one years, and one life, were always given, which not unfrequently prolonged the tenure to sixty or seventy years. And nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the refusal to grant leases, latterly practised by some Irish landlords, has been the cause of any hardship or suffering to the people. The contrary is the fact; and no men know this better than those who so loudly exclaim against the practice. It is a great mistake to imagine that leases are in no instance granted: the truth is, that they are still very generally given; and that in a great majority of those instances where they are withheld, they are so withheld, not with the intention of taking advantage of the tenant's improvements, or depriving him of his political rights, (as the English people are led to believe,) but for the purpose of compelling him to improve and to live comfortably, in spite of his own predilections. On the best managed estates in Ireland, and those where green-cropping has been most generally brought into operation, there are no leases; yet on those properties the tenantry are invariably the most independent and contented. On the estates of the Earl of Gosford, and other proprietors in the north, under the able superintendence of Mr Blacker, (whose conduct is the theme of universal