The Ulster tenant-right custom: its origin, characteristic and position under the Land Acts.

Abstract

Few subjects connected with Irish land have been the cause of more discussion than the Tenant-right Custom of Ulster. For many years before 1870 a controversy was carried on with respect to the attributes of the custom, and whether it possessed sufficiently definite characteristics to warrant its statutory sanction.

As everybody knows, Parliament, by the Land Act of 1870, ended the controversy by legalising the custom, and any discussion that has since taken place has mainly been concerned with the interpretation of the governing statutes. The Land Act of 1881 gave the rights of " free sale" and " fixity of tenure', which the Ulster Custom, to a certain extent secured, to the agricultural tenants of all Ireland, and added the right to a " fair rent" which the Custom claimed, but had hitherto no satisfactory method of enforcing. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the existing Irish Land Code has obviated the necessity for preserving the Ulster Custom.

Accordingly, to understand it aright and to give a proper interpretation to the statutes affecting it, we must make ourselves acquainted with its history and its attributes.