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long each improvement will continue profitable, so as to calculate how
much the tenant loses if he be turned away. Thus a good estimate may be
formed as to the sum which the tenant should receive as compensation,
and the landlord, if he chooses to dismiss the tenant, should be obliged
to pay this compensation. He will get it back by charging a higher rent
to the next tenant.

Tenant right, though unknown in most parts of England, is not at all a
new system; it has existed for a long time in the north of Ireland,
where it is called the #Ulster tenant right#. A new tenant there pays
the old tenant a considerable sum of money for the privilege of getting
a good farm with various improvements, and the land-owner is practically
prevented from turning out a good tenant at his mere will. In Yorkshire
also it has been the custom to compensate an outgoing tenant, and there
is no good reason why the custom should not be made into a legal right,
and extended over the whole country. Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Act has
already established a somewhat similar system throughout Ireland. If the
land is to be used for its proper purposes, and not merely for the
amusement and pride of a few landlords, #every owner of land who lets it
should be obliged either to give a long lease, say of thirty or fifty
years, or else to pay the compensation fixed by a jury# after taking
evidence from those skilled in valuing farms. It should be made illegal
to let land on any other terms.

#69. The Cause of Rent.# It is very important to understand exactly how
rent arises, for without knowing this it is impossible to see why a
landlord should be allowed to come and take away a considerable part of
what is produced, without taking any other trouble in the matter. But
the fact is that we cannot do away with rents: they must go to some one
or other, and the only real question which can arise is whether there
shall be many landlords receiving small rents or few landlords with
great rent-rolls.

Rent arises from the fact that different pieces of land are not equally
fertile, that is, they do not yield the same quantities of produce for
the same quantities of labour. This may arise from the soil being
different, or from one piece of land getting more sun and moisture than
another. If the earth had a perfectly smooth surface the same
everywhere, and if it were all tilled and cultivated in exactly the same
way, there would be no such thing as rent. But the ea