bad farming; for a tenant knew that if his land got into a slovenly state—­with drains stopped up, fences broken down, and weeds growing everywhere—­the result would be that the rent would be reduced by the Commissioners at the end of the fifteen years; as the Commissioners did not go into the question of whose the fault was, but merely took estimates as to what should be the rent of the land in its actual condition.  That farms were in many instances intentionally allowed to go to decay with this object, has been proved; and this pressed hard on the labouring class, as less employment was given.  Thirdly, although the remission of debt may bring prosperity for a time, it may be doubted whether it will permanently benefit the country; for it will be noticed that the attempt to fix prices arbitrarily applied only to the letting and hiring and not to other transactions.  To give a typical instance of what has occurred in many cases:  a tenant held land at a rent of L1. 15s. 0d. per acre; he took the landlord into Court, swore that the land could not bear such a rent, and had it reduced to L1. 5s. 0d.; thereupon he sold it for L20 an acre; and so the present occupier had to pay L1. 5s. 0d. to the nominal landlord, and the interest on the purchase-money (about L1 per acre) to a mortgagee; in fact, he has to pay a larger sum annually than any previous tenant did; and this payment is “rent” in the economic sense though it is paid not to a resident landlord but to a distant mortgagee.  In other words, rent was increased, and absenteeism became general.  Fourthly, it sowed the seeds for future trouble; for it was the temporary union of two antagonistic principles.  On the one hand it was said that “the man who tills the land should own it,” and therefore rent was an unjust tax (in fact it was seriously argued that men of English and Scotch descent who had hired farms in the nineteenth century had a moral right to keep them for ever rent free because tribal tenure had prevailed amongst the Celts who occupied the country many hundreds of years before); on the other it was said that the land belonged to the people of Ireland as a whole and not to any individuals.  If that is so, what right has one man to a large farm when there are hundreds of others in a neighbouring town who have no land at all?  The passing of the Land Acts of 1881 and 1887 made it inevitable that sooner or later a fresh agitation would be commenced by “landless men.”  And fifthly, when an excitable, uneducated people realize that lawlessness and outrages will be rewarded by an Act remitting debts and breaking contracts, they are not likely in future to limit their operations to land, but will apply the same maxims to other contracts.  The demoralizing of character is a fact to be taken into consideration.