LANDLORD EXTORTION IN ULSTER.

Marlborough Express, Volume III, Issue 116, 9 May 1868, Page 6

LANDLORD EXTORTION IN ULSTER.

The following extract from a late number of the Londonderry Standard is a sufficient answer to those who talk about the sentimental grievances of Ireland :—“ Within the last few days wc have become aware of landlord proceedings in a_ northern county, to which, in a moral point of view, we can hardly apply any other epithet than that of legal robbery ; and parallel transactions, unhappily, are by no means raro. A landed proprietor, who shall be nameless, lately wanted a supply of ready money, and having discovered that some of his tenants had, by hard frugality and self-denial, economised small sums, gave them notice that he would give them leases of 21 years at rents amounting in reality to the full 'letting value of their lands, oven without leases, on condition of their paying him fines of £lO per acre, or very nearly half the ordinary average value of the fee simple in the public land market! The tenants alluded to were informed that, if they did not accept these terms, their rents would be raised to an enormous figure, far beyond their means of payment; negotiations were tried and found useless, and the poor men had eventually to hand over to their landlord the total savings of their lives, in order to purchase “leave to toil” for a bare subsistence during twenty-one years to come! One of these tenants, the industrious cultivator of a patch of ground containing 11 acres, had saved £llO by severe economy, as our agricultural readers may suppose, and this poor man was compelled to hand over to his feudal lord and master every penny of his littlo store, in return for one of tho rackrcnt leases above described! These are no solitary instances ; and when British law permits and sanctions in Ireland this kind of privileged extortion, can any reasonable man wonder that popular exasperation is the consequence, and that the emissaries of revolution should take advantage of it ?”