--A.J. BALFOUR, on the Second Reading of the Land Bill, May
4th, 1903.


The reason for the importance of the system of land tenure in the social
conditions of Ireland is to be found in the manner in which the
restrictions on Irish commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries drove the population to secure a livelihood in the only
direction left open to them--namely, agriculture. The results of this
are to be seen to-day in the fact that there are 590,000 holdings in the
island, and that out of a total population of four and a half million
people it is well within the mark to say that three and a half million
are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the land for their means of
existence.

The system of tenure in Ireland was as different as possible from that
existing in Great Britain. The gist of the difference lay in this, that
in England and Scotland landlords let farms, while in Ireland they let
land. "In Ireland," wrote an English observer more than a hundred years
ago, "landlords never erect buildings on their property, nor expend
anything in repairs." This feature, which was the result of historical
reasons, was due to the fact that Irish land-owners were the descendants
of settlers intruded on Irish land, who brought with them English
notions of tenure, but had not the capital to render economic the
numerous small holdings situated on their estates. Hence it came about
that the provision of capital by an English landlord for the equipment
of farms with cottages, outhouses, fencing, and a drainage system, which
results in a sort of partnership between landlord and tenant, was, to a
large extent, a thing unknown in Ireland, where, as was aptly said,
tenants' improvements were landlords' perquisites, and where point was