unavoidable delay as may occur, therefore, does not, under the existing law, involve the serious injury to the tenant implied by the lecturer.  I enclose a printed paper, which will give you further information on this subject.  In conclusion, I would point out that the suggestion that the agrarian trouble in Ireland arises from the difficulty experienced by the tenants in getting judicial rents fixed is not warranted by the facts.  Take as illustrations the cases of two estates which have lately been prominently before the public—­namely, the Ponsonby and the Olphert.  In the former case the landlord is anxious, I believe, to get the tenants to go into Court, and offers to give retrospective effect to the decisions, though not bound by law to do so, but under the influence of the agitators the tenants refuse to go into Court.  In the latter instance judicial rents have long since been fixed in the great majority of cases.

     “Yours faithfully,

     “ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.”

Together with this easy mode of purchase by which the quiet and industrious are profiting, rents are reduced all over the country, though still the Home Rulers reiterate the old charge of “rack-renting,” as if such a thing were the rule.  These unscrupulous misstatements, indeed, make half the difficulties of the Irish question; for lies stick fast, where disclaimers, proofs, facts, and figures, pass by like dry leaves on the wind.  But for all the fact of past extortion the present reductions are not always a proof of over-renting.  What Mr. Buxton says has common sense on the face of it:—­

“Very serious reductions of rents are being made all through Ireland by the Land Sub-Commissioners, who are supposed to be in some extent guided by the appearance of the farms.  Now it should be remembered that at the interview that took place in London on July 3rd, between Mr. Smith-Barry and some of his tenants, in reference to that gentleman’s support of the evictions on the Ponsonby estate, one of the arguments for forgiveness of arrears was that when eviction was threatened ‘the tenants gave up their industry,’ and ’how could they get the rents out of the land when they were absolutely idle?’ To admit such a plea for granting a reduction of rent is most dangerous.  Tenants have but to neglect their land, get into arrears of rent, and claim large reductions because their farms do not pay.  An ignorant, or slovenly, or idle farmer, under such circumstances, is likely to have a lower rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners than his more industrious neighbour, and thus a great injustice may be done to both the good farmer and the landlord, the—­perhaps cunningly—­idle farmer receiving a premium for neglecting his farm.  A comparison of the judicial rents with the former rents and the Poor Law valuation is truly startling, and must lead one to imagine that the system by which so much valuable property is dealt with is most unjust.”