The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-05 00:00:00

LORD WILLIAM HAY IN BERIVIOKSHIRE.

Lord William Hay is taking time by the forelock.
There is no vacancy in the representation of Ber-
wickshire; but Mr-. Robertson is to be made a
peer, and on the strength of this supposition the scion
of the house of Tweeddale has come forward in the
Liberal interest, and has opened the campaign. At a
meeting held in the historic town of Dunse, Lord
William pronounced for a national, unsectarian, and
compulsory system of education, at least so
far as Scotland was concerned. The law
of hypothec was indefensible, and ought to
be abolished. Lord William Hay thinks, with
respect to the Game Laws, that Mr. M'Lagan's
bill did not go far enough, and that it ought to be
made illegal for landlords to put clauses into leases
reserving to themselves the right to kill game. As
to Ireland, he is of opinion that the tenants ought to
receive compensation for improvements made on the
land, and that there should be some recognition by
the Legislature of the proprietary right which the
tenant has enjoyed, if not by right, at least by
custom.

A ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP ON THE LAND
QUESTION.

A somewhat noteworthy letter was sent by Dr.
Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath, to the
tenant right meeting at Navan—noteworthy
principally from the fact that the prelate professes
to have special information of Mr. Gladstone's
intentions, but remarkable also from its arguments.
The Bishop contends at length for the principle that
occupation in the soil gives privileges of ownership.
That it gives certain rights (says Dr. Nulty) Mr.
Gladstone admits ; but the Premier does not carry
out what seems to be the logical conclusion of the
doctrine. The bishop evidently wrote the following
for a popular meeting :

It is evident that God created the earth to produce food
and raiment for the honest and virtuous occupier, who
eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, as well as for the
idle and dissolute landlord, who spends his share of God's
gifts in the extravagance, luxury, or dissipation, perhaps,
of foreign capitals.
This fGremost doctrine . admitted, Dr. Nulty thinks
it follows that a landlord has no moral
right to turn a tenant from his position. It is here
that Mr. Gladstone disagrees with him. If a landlord
wishes to get rid of a tenant, even from caprice, be-
cause, sav, he would not vote with him in a contested
election, Mr. Gladstone will allow him to do so, on
paying the full marketable value of the right on the
soil which occupation gives him. Now, says Dr.
Nulty :
From the very nature of the case the landlord could not
afford to exercise this privilege very frequently, still it is
essentially unjust. Either the occupation gives a right of
ownership on the soil, or it does not. If it does give such
a right, then it is as unjust to compel the occupier to part
with that right at any price as it would be to oblige me to
sell my horse or my watch against my will, even at their
value.

The other blot which Dr. Nulty criticises in the
Government measure laid before him is that the
Premier will exclude from the benefits of his bill all
very small tenants. Such a policy is a practica
denial of the foremost doctrine of the bill.

MORE TENANT-RIGHT MEETINGS.
The tenant-right movement is kept up in Ireland
with undiminished spirit. After the Fenians dis-
persed the gathering at Limerick, about 100
farmers held a meeting to themselves. Another
meeting was held at Magherafelt, in Londonderry,
and yet another at Scotstown, in Monaghan.
The resolutions passed at all three places were to the
usual purport : to wit, that when a farmer has settled
upon a plot of ground, he ought to remain there as
long as he likes, provided that he pays his rent; and
that the rate of rent ought to be revised by a com-
petent tribunal at intervals—that is, if the landlord
and tenant cannot agree.
Mr. W. Johnson, 31. P., the leader of the Ulster
Orange party, has accepted an invitation to a meeting
of the Ballymoney Tenant Right Association. In a
letter to the secretary he expresses his entire sym-
pathy with the tenant-farmer, considers that no one
should refuse giving him compensation for unex-
hausted improvements, and, suggests the holding of
a conference on the matter by the Ulster tenant-
farmers.