much better off at present than he could be under any such arrangement; he in reality not only makes the want of tenant-right an excuse for his indolence and dishonesty, but he uses it as a cloak for his meditated spoliation. Mr Griffith, the government valuator, stated in his examination before Lord Devon's commission, that his valuation was based upon the market price of certain articles of agricultural produce, which, at the time he commenced his proceedings, were _ten per cent_ higher in value than they were at the time when the act which authorised his valuation was passed; and that, consequently, being restricted to the respective values attached to each article in the schedule of that act, his valuation was in the first instance ten per cent _under_ what it would have been had he not laboured under such a restriction. He further says, that while in the north the rent actually paid amounted in most instances to from thirty to fifty per cent _above his valuation_, in the western counties it was not much if at all more than the value he had put upon the land; and yet, he adds, the peasantry in the north, paying those high rents, were industrious, prosperous, and happy, while those in the west, who held better land on so much more reasonable terms, were steeped in misery and crime. It is then manifestly unjust to attribute the poverty of Connaught to the exorbitance of the rents, or the prosperity of Ulster to the moderate price exacted for the land. But then the northern tenant is secured remuneration for his toils if he wish to dispose of his tenant-right:--admitted,--but the southern and western tenant has still the advantage, for he sells or is compensated where he has never made any improvements at all. There is no absolute law to protect the right of the tenant in either case: but whereas custom, a due regard to justice, and we may also add, to his own interests, induce the northern landlord to consent to a sale which will secure not only his rent, but a thriving instead of a failing tenant,--intimidation and violence compel the southern landlord not only to forgive all rent due by a defaulting tenant, (and that in most cases amounting to three or four years) but also, after he has been put to heavy legal expenses, to _compensate_ him for leaving his house a wreck and his land a wilderness. Under such circumstances, can it be supposed for a moment that any landlord would refuse a tenant the right to sell, thereby avoiding the loss of his arrears; or that he would prefer to evict at a heavy legal expense, and then in the end remunerate, in order that he might conciliate the outgoing tenant, and thus escape being shot?