tenant-right candidates, without reference to the desires or orders of those who have no legal or constitutional right to control the use of my franchise.  I have since received from the office a notice to quit, desiring me to give up possession of all my holdings, as tenant from year to year, in the counties of Down and Antrim, without any intimation that I shall receive compensation, and without being able to obtain any explanation of this conduct towards me except by popular rumour.’  At the same meeting Mr. Hugh M’Call said that he had looked over some documents and found that the individuals in Lisburn who had received notices to quit held property to the value of 3,000 l., property raised by themselves, or purchased by them with the sanction of the landlord.  In one case the agent himself went into the premises where buildings were being erected, and suggested some changes.  In fact the improvements were carried out under his inspection as an architect.  Yet he served upon that gentleman a notice to quit.  Some of the tenants paid the penalty for their votes by surrendering their holdings; others contested the right of eviction on technical points, and succeeded at the quarter sessions.  One of the points was, as already mentioned, that a dean and rector could not be legally a land agent at the same time.  It was, indeed, a very ugly fact that the rector of the parish should be thus officially engaged, not only in nullifying the political rights of his own Protestant parishioners, but in destroying their tenant-right, evicting them from their holdings, which they believed to be legal robbery and oppression, accompanied by such flagrant breach of faith as tended to destroy all confidence between man and man, and thus to dissolve the strongest bonds of society.  Sad work for a dignitary of the church to be engaged in!

In April, 1856, there was another contested election.  On that occasion the marquis wrote to a gentleman in Lisburn that he would not interfere ‘directly or indirectly to influence anybody.’  Nevertheless, notices to quit, signed by Mr. Walter L. Stannus, assistant and successor to his father, were extensively served upon tenants-at-will, though it was afterwards alleged that they were only served as matters of form.  But what, then, did they mean?  They meant that those who had voted against the office had, ipso facto, forfeited their tenant-right property. Many other incidents in the management of the estate have been constantly occurring more recently, tending to show that the most valuable properties created by the tenants-at-will are at the mercy of the landlord, and that tenant-right, so called, is not regarded by him as a matter of right at all, but merely as a favour, to be granted to those who are dutiful and submissive to the office in all matters, political and social.  For instance, one farmer was refused permission to sell his tenant-right till he consented to sink 100 l. or 200 l. in the shares of the Lisburn and Antrim railway, so that, as he believed, he was obliged to throw away his money in order to get his right.