IRISH TENANTS' PRIVILEGES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8335, 11 April 1889, Page 3

IRISH TENANTS' PRIVILEGES.

In connection with Mr Dillon's visit to Australasia to beg moneys to support Irish agitators, the following facts in reference to the privileges of tenants in Ireland will he of interest : — 1. Every tenant in Ireland, leaseholders included, has the right to apply to the Land Court to affix a fair rent for his holding. 2. These rents are fixed, not according to supply and demand, or according to the value of the land in past years, hut at a rate which a tenant may reasonably be expected to pay after allowing for a fair profit on his harvest. 3. The tenant is allowed to sell his interest in the farm, and any improvements he may have made, for as much as he can get in the open market. This interest, or tenant-right, will often fetch from ten to twenty years' purchase of the rent. 4. The tenant is free from the payment ot tithe, which falls upon the landlord. 5. The tenant only pays one-half the amount of the .poor rate, the other half being borne by the landlord. 6. When a tenant falls into arrear with bis rent, be cannot be evicted at once, but is allowed six months' grace before being compelled to restore the land to the owner. 7. Besides thus restraining the landlord's right of eviction, the ordinary power of all creditors to proceed against a tenant for a debt will be suspended when the Court is ot opinion that his difficulties urise from no fault of his own. 8. Where a tenant is able to show that through no fault of his own he is unable to pay his rent, the Land Court may spread his liabilities over a period of years, so as to give him time to meet his obligations by convenient instalments. 9. Whenever the prices of produce have fallen so much that the fair rent at first fixed by the Court has become too high, the tenant is allowed an abatement corresponding to the fall of prices in the district. 10. To tenants who wisli to buy their land the purchase money is advanced at a low rate of interest, the repayment being spread over a period of 49 years. 11. An Irish acre, it should he remembered, is equal to one and three-fifths of an English acre.