The tenant's
right was more than swallowed up by the increase of rent. This was done
so successfully that were it not for the Act of 1870, there would be no
trace of the Ulster custom left.
It has been the custom from the plantation times to let the tenants
build, clear, fence, improve, drain, on lands let low because they were
bare of improvement. The difference between what the land was worth when
the tenant got it, and what generations of thrifty outlay of time and
the means made it was the tenant's property, and the Ulster custom
allowed him to sell his right to his improvements to the highest bidder.
On some lands the tenant right was much more than the rent, as it should
be when it was made valuable by years and years of outlay; but
landlords, pinched for money, or greedy for money, naturally grudged
that this should be, and set themselves by office rules to nip and pick
the tenant right all away.
One great difference between the men of the lowland farms and the
Donegal Celt of the hills is that they have felt and treasured up the
remembrance of injustice since the settlement. Their lowland neighbors
never began to sympathize with them until they knew how it felt
themselves. In speaking of injustice and cruelty toward the hill
tenants, I was often told, "Oh, these things are of the past," they
occurred thirty years ago. How philosophically people can endure the
miseries they do not feel. The sponge has not been created that will
wipe off the Donegal mountains the record of deeds that are graven
there.
To come back to tenant right, an office rule was made giving the out-
going tenant three years' rent, in some cases five years' rent for his
claim on the farm, and "out you go." Mr. McCausland, whose estate joins
Limavady, gave three years' rent. Since the Land Act of 1870, and since
the eyes of the world have been turned on the doings of Ireland, he has
allowed something more for unexhausted manuring. He has also advanced
money to some extent for improvements, adding five per cent, not to the
loan, but to the rent, thus making the interest a perpetual charge on
the property. Landlords in Donegal did the same with the money they got
from Government to lend to the people - got it at one and a half per cent
from Government, re-lent it at five per cent, making the interest a
perpetual rent charge.
"When self the wavering balance shakes
'Tis rarely right adjusted."
The tenants, I think, are naturally averse to borrowing money which
brings interest in perpetuity over them, and enables the landlord to
say, "I made the improvements myself." Into these improvements enters
the tenant's labor, as well as the perpetual interest.
