Before proceeding to examine its provisions, it might be well to point out that the common law rights of Irish agricultural tenants were in the absence of special customs governed since the reign of James I. by English common law rules. The English system of land tenure was imposed upon the country by virtue of conquest. But the circumstances of the two countries were entirely different. In England the landlord owned the soil and everything on it. The dwelling houses and out-offices, the farm roads, the drainage, were built by him or his predecessors. He let a holding to a tenant as a going concern, and for the holding so equipped he received rent. The relations between landlord and tenant in England rested on a business footing. If the tenant did not feel satisfied with his farm or his lot, he moved on. There were none of the ties there, either of attachment or of interest, that existed in Ireland. In Ireland the tenant or his predecessor provided, by his labours or his savings, the whole equipment of the farm. His family for generations back occupied the same plot, and he dearly learned to know and love every stone and hedge about the place. In England the improvements were effected by the landlord out of the rent paid him by the tenant, and, of course, were legally his by the law of the land. In Ireland the improvements, almost universally made by the tenant, became at common law the property of the landlord, who was under no _legal_ obligation to compensate the tenant for them on ejecting him from his holding. The following extract from the report of the Devon Commission contrasts the practice in the two countries very well. "The Commission finds on all hands, it is admitted, that, according to the general practice in Ireland, the landlord builds neither dwelling-house nor farm-offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., into good order before he lets his land to a tenant. The cases in which a landlord does any of those things are the exceptions. The system, however, of giving aid in these matters is becoming more prevalent. In most cases whatever is done in the way of building is done by the tenant, and in the ordinary language of the country dwelling-houses, farm-buildings, and even the making of the fences are described by the general word 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm, without which in England or Scotland no tenant would be found to rent it." What I have said represents the general, but, I should add, not the universal, condition of things in Ireland at this time.