s is. In the Counties of
Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are more
Catholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down the
numbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided. What is known as
the question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, for
it is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Down
that the religious question is most acute.

The social conditions of the country, which have always been to some
extent, though not to that existing in recent years, agricultural, lead
one to seek a cause in the conditions of Land Tenure for the different
degrees of prosperity pervading the North-East corner of Ulster and the
rest of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the Ulster Custom of
Tenant Right had an immense effect on the economic status of the
province. Under it the system of tenure which held the field in the
other three provinces was replaced by one in which the tenants had
security against arbitrary eviction so long as they paid their rents,
and, in addition, were entitled to sell their interest in the property
to the incoming tenant, and this Tenant Right sold often for as much as
half, and sometimes for as much as the full, fee-simple of the holding.
The sum could be obtained on the tenant voluntarily vacating the holding
or on his being unable to pay the rent, the landlord being entitled to
be consulted with a view to approval by him of the incoming tenant.

The importance of the custom can be recognised in the light of the fact
that in England, where improvements are effected in nearly every case
not by the tenant but by the landlord, it has been found necessary,
nevertheless, to give legislative sanction to Tenant Right.

This has been effected by the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875, 1883,
and 1900, under which tenants are entitled to statutory compensation for
improvements, whether permanent, as, for example, buildings; for
drainage purposes; or, as in the case of manure, for the improvement of
the soil.

The result of the Ulster Custom on the industry of the Northern
tenant-farmer, who enjoyed a freedom of sale and a fixity of tenure,
and, further, a compensation for improvements long before the tenants of
the South and West secured these advantages, are impossible to
over-estimate. Again, in considering the relative economic positions of
the members of the two religions, it is impossible to blink the fact
that little more