them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the
land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had
expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a
period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circumstance, may
have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the
land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the
amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a
tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute
power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The
law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he
obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only
generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of
it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was passed
can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of
occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant
right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a
farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has
afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has
then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more than
equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this
has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements
by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen
in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the
excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or
passion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some
exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the
tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the
price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a
general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not
represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but
was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one
person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive
ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal
proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the
agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is
true, reserve to