had
neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements
which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a
leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to
renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the
farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and
penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other
hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case,
though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the
lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse.
Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor
the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those
elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements,
was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system.
Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied,
and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain
them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland.

But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and
the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and
thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later
immigrants had flowed in, and at the beginning of the eighteenth
century in the north-eastern portion--the predominantly Protestant
Ulster of to-day--Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were
thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and
tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires
in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal
rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of
other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the
Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly
obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted
the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the
Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads
and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons
only--and there were others which I shall mention--many thousands of
Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage
and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war,
and at the end